Sports thoughts

Football season is upon us, and to be frank I guess we could play football without all the distractions. It doesn’t matter what level we look at, more is written and talked about outside the boundary lines than in.

Let’s start with the pros. Who is going to stand during the National Anthem? Who is going to kneel? Who is going to stay in the locker room? What are the owners going to do to the players that don’t comply? What is our President going to tweet about in any demonstrations?

Had enough questions? Me, too. Let’s look at some facts. The NFL lost hundreds of millions of dollars by fans that objected to players’ demonstrations. The NFL is a business and it can’t afford loses like that every year. Whatever actions they take concerns money. If this weren’t the case they would have acted the first time players knelt.

I guess I’ve had enough analysis of what college prospects are going to make a big impact on the pro

game. T.V. devotes untold hours to every draft, with gurus like Mel Kiper telling us what players can’t miss. You know the computer doesn’t lie. Here is a list of NFL Hall of Famers – Willie Brown, Kurt Warner, John Randle. Here are some other names you might recognize – Warren Moon, Tony Romo, Arian Foster, Wes Welker, James Harrison, Antonio Gates, London Fletcher. The list could go on indefinitely. What do they have in common? They were all free agents, undrafted, unwanted. The computer and top notch analysts forget one factor – the spirit, will, and determination of the human heart.

The Urban Meyer saga at Ohio State sounds like a soap opera. Did he know his assistant was a wife beater? Did he owe this coach something? Did he sweep it under the carpet and hope his assistant wouldn’t do it again? For a guy that appears to be squeaky clean, and holds his players to the highest moral standard, Urban Meyer has a lot of questions to answer. Meanwhile in Columbus, Ohio, its win no matter who’s at the top.

Is DJ Durkin at Maryland going to survive? He is a coach that pushed his players, so much so one of them died. He is being sued, vilified, and labeled a monster. When all the facts come out we can judge for ourselves. An interesting note, the late great Alabama coach, Bear Bryant, faced a similar dilemma many years ago.

Bryant was the new coach at Texas A&M. He basically held a boot camp for 130 players out in the wilderness. He drove them everyday. Thirty-three remained after the two-week ordeal. One player suffering heat stroke and near death was visited by his parents. Bryant explained that harsh treatment was “just like war.” The father of the of the near dying boy, pointed to his shoulder, where he had lost an arm in World War II. He simply said, to Bryant, “What you do isn’t war, this is war.”

I was going to go into the problems of high school football in Arizona, particularly Yuma, but I don’t want to clutter up too much of the sports page. I’ll save that for next time. In any event, enjoy the game of football, it’s coached and played by great people – for the most part. A reminder when watching the game, you might want to press MUTE, you’ll be a lot happier.