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March Madness turns to white bass fishing in East Texas

My interest in March Madness ceased on Sunday evening. The reason is simple. My team was beaten.

That my team, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, lost to UCLA is not a surprise. The Lumberjacks had never journeyed beyond the first round before Friday. That was when the team from Nacogdoches, Texas, shocked the hell out of a lot of folks in their mind-bending overtime win over fourth-seeded Virginia Commonwealth. This is only the second time SFA had gone to the big dance.

The Bruins practically invented college basketball or sits as its master of the sport. UCLA hadn’t won it all lately so they got themselves a new coach. So did Stephen F. Austin.

UCLA had height, and a lot of it. SFA were relatively little people compared to UCLA.  But SFA had heart. They had soul. They had a long-haired boy called “Sunshine” who wore tie-dyed shirts when not attired for basketball. Oh, and he likes to hunt and fish. He told one sports reporter he liked fishing for white bass on the Angelina River. Yes, that boy,  Jacob Parker, is the real deal if he knows about white bass and the Angelina.  This time of year the white bass make their “run” along the Angelina.

My friends and I used to hang out at a place on the Angelina known as Shawnee Landing. The property actually belonged to the U.S. Forest Service and was a nice little place to come hang out, go fishing, drink a beer or fire up a doobie. Unfortunately, too many found the place and made Shawnee too good of a thing. I don’t know if it’s closed now or not. All I know is it’s a kind of place where long-haired country boys like to go. I used to take all country roads — one was barely paved — to the place from my house. And on days I’ve had like today, I sure miss that part of Nacogdoches County and those times.

Well, ol’ Sunshine will be back next year and so will many of the ‘Jacks who brought them to San Diego for two rounds of NCAA tourney hoops. Hopefully, the Jack’s now second-year coach Brad Underwood will find him some big ol’ boys taller than the ones he’s got and who can shoot. Meanwhile, the Jacks are back home and Sunshine is probably out fishing. Let’s hope so. The boys, the new “media darlings” at the big dance this year, are Jacks who are back in Nac. Take me home country road.

It’s not a bad place to be.

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Local university fires coach with famous name, maybe more

Basketball, has not been berry berry good to me. I never played, at least in an organized fashion. I was the varsity team’s equipment manager as a high school freshman. That was prior to my career throughout high school as a sports writer. Then pick up games, the most famous happening at the end of my first week at rookie school as a firefighter. A guy named Blaine threw me a hard pass and, snap, went my left pinkie. About two years later I broke the other pinkie playing another pickup game. From then on, nothing stronger than H-O-R-S-E.

Basketball has not been berry berry good to our local university either. Fans at Lamar University, a low-end Division I NCAA school in Beaumont, Texas, thought they’d been set afire two years ago when the school hired Pat Knight as mens basketball coach. Yes, as in that Knight. In the end, Lamar basketball had not been so beery berry good to Pat Knight.

The junior Knight led his first Lamar Cardinals team to the 2012 NCAA Tournament. The team crapped out in the first round. But it was the first Cardinal team to go to the big show in 20 years. It did take some Bobby Knight-like bluster. His lengthy rant after his team was verbally scorched by my old alma mater, Stephen F. Austin, went viral on You Tube.

 “I mean these kids are stealing money by being on a scholarship … “ Pat Knight said at one point in the nearly nine-minute harangue.

That massive tongue-lashing seemed to turn the team around, as they won the conference title and headed to the NCAA tourney. But since then. Nothing. Or about as close as you can get. Last season, Lamar went 3-28 overall. This year was 3-22, as for the Knight era, which ended last night. He was fired with two years remaining on his contract.

It seemed as if a story about an upcoming Lamar- University of New Orleans match-up Thursday was psychic. A Friday Times-Picayune story was headlined: “Lamar University Coach Pat Knight facing heat playing UNO Thursday.” Of course, Knight no longer faces heat.

My not being a big basketball fan, perhaps, expands the patience I have for folks. Especially those people who I find very entertaining. The university just brought back football and one would expect a team would need a bit of time to stack those building blocks together. The football Cardinals haven’t swept up its share of winning either. I guess it is because I have met Lamar football coach Ray Woodard and found him to be a genuinely nice guy is where I tune out calls by those who expect instant wins to fire him. I had plenty of patience for Pat Knight, though I don’t personally know him. Of course, Knight has also perhaps expected the trapdoor, even though he didn’t say so out loud.

In a very non-basketball way, Pat Knight has been good for Lamar and good for college hoops. As the son of one of the top three winningest college coaches and himself a player on an NCAA Championship team, Knight has seen how the glory of the game makes some players feel they are bigger than the game itself. For some reason, some chumps who can do not much more than shoot hoops think the world should be made over in their likeness. Knight, Pat and Bob, seem to think young men should be cut down a notch. Perhaps it is to remind the players that they should always be shooting up toward the hoops rather than down at them and at the rest of the world.

Or maybe they’re just big bullies on an ego trip. Who the hell knows?

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Fandemonium. Not too Smart.

It is funny how some exciting sporting is taking place in Sochi, Russia, and the big sports story over the weekend concerned a top NBA prospect and Oklahoma State star pushing a rabid Texas Tech fan.

The player wasn’t just any player. He is Marcus Smart, a young man destined for the NBA draft, or was until this weekend.

Smart went out of bounds and into the crowd after a fast break. He was then pushed by Tech fanatic, Jeff Orr, after the latter spouted some disputed trash talk. Orr, an air traffic controller and Tech “No. 1 fan” from Waco, contends he called Smart “a piece of crap.” Smart said he was called a racial slur.

In the end, Smart was suspended three games. Orr was banned from Tech games for the remainder of the season. No aspersions cast here on Raiders Coach Tubby Smith, but one wishes Bobby Knight was still coaching for tech.

What Smart was called is no longer relevant. The damage was done, to an already iffy reputation for the player. And the fan who reportedly drives hundreds of miles to see his team will have to spend his off days trying to catch the Red Raiders on TV.

Smart showed poor judgement. Orr showed just as poor judgement. Still, it doesn’t seem like a tie. Read a “leftist” perspective here.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of such a show. I’ve seen it myself in high school. I was team equipment manager. We were at a very hostile venue. Our biggest and best player was clearly called “a n*****.” This player responded by handling the ball with his left hand showing a middle finger while passing in bounds. The redneck who yelled at this player responded by pulling out a rather large pocket knife. Luckily the Texas Highway Patrol was on hand and the fan was removed. The game was soon over and the same troopers escorted us back to the bus and told us we should split. We did.

Our player overreacted, but less so than Smart. The fan’s reaction toward our high school player was way above what it should have been. I don’t know what happened to the fan. This was the early 1970s. He may have gotten a medal from his mouth-breathing cohorts. Our player got “soul shakes” and pats on the butt (?) all around. I chose the soul shake.

I don’t know what is the answer to these problems. These flare-ups been around for ages and at all levels. A video released by Texas Tech of the incident shows Orr hiking up his britches and smirking after Smart is restrained and headed back toward his bench. He reminded me of Rush Limbaugh.

Both men apologized. So no harm, I suppose. Smart did get a technical foul and OSU lost the game.

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Peyton didn’t shoot rainbows out his butt though German engineers did

For your reading pleasure I will not be the Monday afternoon quarterback after the latest version of the “Big Game.” Blowouts do not make for good games when you aren’t really wild about either team. I liked certain individual players, Peyton for one. There are several local guys, Earl Thomas and Red Bryant, come to mind, who played for the Seahawks. Seattle came, and must have brought actual fans rather than corporate types, they saw and they conquered.

I am extremely happy Peyton Manning had the remarkable season that he did. Especially coming off four cervical spine surgeries. I didn’t think he could do it. And I really didn’t think he should have even played. I have had two neck surgeries. The first was when I was about Peyton’s age and the second one, where they cut a piece of my hip and fused it with a titanium strip with screws, when I was 45. I recovered okay from the first one but it wasn’t a long time that I had additional C-spine problems that are virtually inoperable unless I have some serious bodily or life-threatening conditions. The difference is that I have never been close to being in similar physical condition as Peyton. Hell, he was in better condition when he was under anesthesia and on the operating table for five hours than I have ever been. I probably could have beat him in a 40 had I been 27 and he still under on the operating table, but even that is questionable.

Maybe Peyton gave me hope that others don’t have to go through the pain and other bullshit that I do with chronic pain from degenerative arthritis. One must remember though, Peyton has those Manning genes. All three boys were exceptional athletes, even though all three didn’t have the best necks. Peyton and Eli’s brother Cooper Manning had to give up football prior to starting at Old Miss. He had spinal stenosis, which I had prior to my 2001 surgery, though his was more severe so that had he been hit he might end up paralyzed. These Manning boys remind me of the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito characters in the movie “Twins” in which the unlikely pair were part of an experiment to build the better human being. Kind of like Frankenstien, except more handsome and more engaging with uncanny athletic abilities, the young Manning boys.

The Super Bowl commercials also pretty much sucked this year. I did think a few were good. Audi’s “Doberhuahua” hit it out of the park, I think. I also thought the Volkswagen German engineers sprouting wings when their cars reached 100,000 miles was pretty funny, especially upon the young girl’s suggestion that at 200,000 they also shoot rainbows out their butts.

A few highs and a few lows this Super Bowl XLVIII, but mostly lows.

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Interviews such as that of the Seahawks’ Sherman need a little context

When Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman “went nuts” on Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews, as she would later explain, I was probably like millions of other viewers of the NFC Championship game Sunday left wondering “WTF?”

Sherman tipped a pass from San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick that allowed Seahawks linebacker Malcolm Smith to grab the game-clutching interception, sending the Seattle team to face Denver in Super Bowl XLVIII. Sherman later explained the adrenalin-amped outburst with Andrews holding onto her mike had as much to do with an off-field slight by 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree as it did with any particular on-field action. To Andrews the raging comments Sherman made was pure gold.

Said Andrews: “He lost his mind and it was awesome for once, you know?”

Forget for the moment that I thought I had been tele-ported to a WWE match. With a little perspective — even counting Sherman’s claim that he is the best at his position in the NFL — I get it as a sports fan and as a journalist. Not as the former that I agree with him.

Thankfully I interviewed very few athletes during my career as a journalist. That isn’t due to any bias but the run-of-the-mill sports-related interview is usually nothing more than a coach-inspired cliche fest. Of course some cliches, like the old north Texas high school coach who told a TV reporter after a severe loss: “They beat us like a rented mule,” will always have a spot in my heart as a classic. But these days the trite bite usually is what you hear from everyone who plays sports from Pop Warner to the pros. What Andrews did not have to say, it gets old as hell.

Ir calls to mind my time as a courthouse reporter covering a spat between the local commissioners court and what could be best identified as a “Christian identity” militia type. “The Rev” always had some kind of nugget that otherwise made those Monday mornings at the courthouse snooze time.

“You wear women’s underwear,” the Rev. W.N. Otwell told the commissioners, who told him his group would need a permit to parade along with some Ku Kluxers on the courthouse grounds. This was a week or so after I had been visited by a man who described himself as “the Exalted Cyclops” of his Klan group.

A reporter doesn’t want rage aimed toward themselves, of course. That can get quite dangerous in a hurry. And though Andrews may have protested that she wasn’t scared. I think from the look that she first exhibited indicated she might just pee her pants on TV. It’s okay to be scared Erin, it can keep you alive. I think she handled herself well. And now with some perspective I understand Rasta Man’s outburst too. It was ill-advised but you can understand things when get way over the top. And despite what some high-and-mighty f**ks might think, sometimes an outburst can get you through the intricate problems that cloud your head occasionally. Such exhibitions shouldn’t be a chance an easy chance to rid a valued employee so they can hire one or more wet-behind-the-ears kids on the (way) cheap.

That’s all I have to say about that. Such a great line, Forrest.