Good news, bad news …

For lovers of college football (or the closest thing we have to college football now), the bad news:

Bowl Season is over.

All the teams gave it the good ol’ college try and the ones who advanced the farthest in the new-fangled College Football Playoff gave it the good ol’ professional try.

The old-fangled programs, the ones with thigh pads and football fields but not nearly as much folding money, were all playing for second at best when practice started back in August.

Ohio State started with the most money (a $20 million-plus roster) and ended with the trophy and a 34-23 win over Notre Dame, a private school with a fun team (I’ve become a fan) and money to burn as well. But who knows how much is enough these days?

Are cornerbacks on special this week? Two-for-one defensive tackles? Can you trade me a safety for a punter and a split end to be named later?

Regardless, it was fun to watch. BowlFest 2024 began with Jackson State and South Carolina State waaaaay back on Saturday, Dec. 14, more than a month ago. Was a fun run of 47 games from then until Monday night’s finale.

I didn’t miss many.

If you were a stupid person and joined a “pool” like, let’s say, ESPN Bowl Mania (just raised my hand), then suddenly you were very interested in who was quarterbacking East Carolina and how many starters Colorado State returned on defense.

BowlFest has a way of luring in the unsuspecting and giving them hope. And the rest of us are stupid enough to forget that just when we think we’ve seen it all, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

I got hot and was ripping off mid-December wins like Grant took Richmond. Then came an 0-7 slump and I hated everyone who ever even went to Coastal Carolina or Fresno State or Toledo, much less played football for them this season.

BowlNuts will understand, completely.

Finished an unenthusiastic 27-20 and in 42,503 place. Remarkably, 68.2 percent of those playing finished worse than I did. I hope they get help.

But now it’s over, and we will have to think of something else to worry about. March Madness and the ESPN Tournament Challenge is a cold and protracted two months away. What to do? …

Which brings us to the good news.

The Daytona 500 is Sunday, Feb. 16. Yes! The start of NASCAR season looms. Just three weeks and change away. Shoot, you can fight a bear for three weeks.

Glorious, dirty, mind numbingly loud NASCAR. And you don’t even have to pay the cars. Just give ’em some oil and gas, maybe grease down the ol’ suspension and she’ll purr just fine, ’round and ’round the oval.

I know more about NASCAR than you could fit in your glove compartment but less than what you could fit inside your trunk. We’ll explore as the season approaches.

But this I do know: NASCAR folk are tougher than the Ball Crowd. We get the jits if a batted ball flies into the stands or a whiskey bottle or beer cup flies out of them. NASCAR fans are dodging wayward wheels and line-drive lug nuts.

Tough as a boot’s bottom.

So get loose, NASCAR fans, and get ready for your 2025 mid-February season opener. Change the oil and kick them tires. Be talkin’ to you shortly.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Mid-October and things are getting for reals this football season as leaves change and so do teams’ fortunes.

The calendar suggests we are inching up on mid-season — unless you are a Dallas or New Orleans fan; then records and scores suggest the season might just be over.

Oh, the twists and the turns. 

And so it’s been in this most popular and crazy game since the first farmboy came across a pig’s bladder and in a moment of genius said, “Now wait just a dog-gone minute!” stamped “WILSON” on it and invented the football. Thus, the term “pigskin,” which bats leadoff in today’s Art of Sports Talkin’, Football Edition.

Back when March Madness began, we reviewed basketball, also known informally as roundball or b-ball or the rock, as sports has a language all its own, and each individual sport has an even more specialized lingo. A field goal is different in football than in basketball. “Pin” is one thing in bowling and another in wrestling, and foul trouble is when a basketball player or team is in danger of reaching the limit of fouls allowed without disqualification or penalty. Foul trouble is also what you are in when you sit next to a fan who smells like an old sneaker, and fowl trouble is when the concession stand runs out of chicken tenders.

And so it goes.

Now we walk “foobaw,” as an offensive lineman in a bad mood might grunt.

We start with a biggie, born in 1975 in the NFL playoffs in Minnesota when beloved Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach retreated into the pocket in a desperate situation trailing the Vikings late, said afterward he closed his eyes and “said a Hail Mary,” and launched a bomb to future fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Drew Pearson, who caught the ball in double coverage to score and give the Cowboys the win. And so was born the football Hail Mary, when a quarterback chunks a long desperation pass to a receiver, usually clumped with a lot of other shoulder-padded humanity and usually into the end zone, as Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers did Monday Night in New York in the Jets loss to Buffalo. A pair of sidenotes: a Hail Mary is not always complete — such is life — and a Hail Mary sounds the same but is different in meaning than what you might say when Mary is late or spills hot coffee on your lap.

“Encroachment” is believed to be when a defensive player enters the “neutral zone” before the snap — although in reality, no one truly knows what encroachment is, and if they say they do, even if they are a football official, they are lying.

“Officials” are called referees (or convicts or zebras because of the striped shirts they wear); these are the people who call holding on your team pretty much whenever the mood strikes. Fans with money on the game should be able to call encroachment against the zebras.

“Pooch kick” is what happens when the kicker, during a kickoff, doesn’t kick it very far on purpose; this lessens the odds of the receiving team having a good return. If that same kicker is a dog owner and misses a field goal, it increases the odds that he’ll perform a pooch kick when he gets home, and if that happens, we hope he misses every field goal he tries for the rest of his pitiful football life.

“Hard count” is what the quarterback does when he is calling for the ball to be snapped and changes the rhythm of his call to try and draw the defense offsides. It’s also what happens when a person from South Carolina like me is asked to add.

“Victory formation” is when the offense, with a lead and time expiring, bunches together at the line of scrimmage, as if they are gossiping, so the quarterback can take a knee and run clock and end the game. It is a favorite formation, and we hope your team gets to run it every time you play.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Professional football is the most popular sport in America and maybe in his hemisphere, so that probably puts me in the minority in thinking it borders on completely boring compared to the college game and compared to the way the pro game was played when I was a kid.

Weather. Outside. Ripped and dirty jerseys. People could tackle and were allowed to. Tape. Mud. Hockey-player teeth. Grass.

That sort of thing.

Long (but true) story.

So when I kind of/sort of want to watch, I recall a simpler time and watch it with the Mannings on “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli” on ESPN2 while the “main” broadcast (as if!) airs on either ESPN or ABC.

As a lot of fans in Louisiana did, I spent Monday night watching defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City host New Orleans. Kept it tuned to ESPN2. Football is fun when the Manning brothers and their guests are in the house and on the couch. Somehow, with Peyton in a downtown Denver garage/den/TV studio, Eli somewhere in his house within the gravitational pull of New York or New Jersey, and with their guest from wherever they might be, it all works out.

All-Star Lineup Monday: Peyton’s old nemesis Bill Belichick in the first half, third quarter with actor and KC super fan Paul Rudd, and the best for last: the ManningCast debut of the father of the Super Bowl quarterbacks and TV hosts sons, Archie Manning, for the fourth quarter.

Best way to watch a game.

Kansas City remained perfect at 5-0 and covered the 5.5 spread easily, beating the Saints, now 2-3, 26-13. Not a compelling game, but with the Mannings and their guests, beautiful.

Teams practice of course, but the purest beauty comes when players improvise, which they must do more than you might think. Same with the ManningCast, an offspring of Peyton’s Omaha Productions company: some of the show is planned —film clips and questions, a bonafide “bit” now and then, like Eli throwing football into a picture of his big brother’s head taped to a net — but the best parts are improvised, when the guys or the guests are flushed from the pocket.

That happens on the ManningCast about as often as the ball is snapped.

The Chiefs led 16-7 at half, the Saints hanging in there when it looked early as if the game might get away from them. A start-and-stop second half. Who cares? The babble and brotherhood carried the day.

At various times, the trio of The Brothers Manning and Belichick talked about a safety blitz that helped the Chiefs beat the Chargers in September—although the safety wasn’t even supposed to blitz. But it worked. And about how that’s often the case in the NFL, and about how those “busts” often turn into planned plays.

After that game, Peyton told Eli he’d guessed that the blitz was a bust. Eli said it wasn’t, called Chiefs stud defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuola and asked him, Spag said it WAS a bust, “and you owe me $20,” Peyton reminded Eli as he drew the blitz on the telestrator. All while the game continued.

Belichick, who coached New England to six Super Bowl wins, told a story (the stories are the thing!) about when he was an assistant with the New York Giants and how Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor came off the field after a sack when he wasn’t supposed to blitz but did, and his coach Bill Parcells said “We don’t have that blitz in our playbook” and Taylor smiled and said “Maybe we oughta put it in.”

They talked about Andy Reid’s call sheet, the big laminated card that looks like a Waffle House menu he carries on the sidelines. They talked about how the card is divided, showed an enlarged picture of it on Peyton’s giant TV telestrator, explained how it’s divided into plays to get certain players the ball or defenses to run on certain downs or distances. Or how Reid might order the No. 2, extra bacon.

They talked about the Saints good-looking new black helmets, about Belichick’s “On to Cincinnati” quote after suffering a shellacking in 2014 (the Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl that season), about how stiff-hipped defensive backs get put at safety and the hip-swivelers play corner.

Just stuff. But lots of stuff. Good stuff.

Rudd was People magazine’s  Sexiest Man Alive in 2021, and Eli asked him if he’d know beforehand if he’d been chosen or “will I just find out when everybody else does,” and of course there was a mock cover of People with a picture of Eli as the newest “Sexiest Man” looking half asleep in his jersey, and then the Saints nose guard intercepted a dropped pass in the end zone and ran it back to midfield, the ultimate indignity, to spoil a Chiefs score, and the quarter ended and Paul went from being The Sexiest Man in America to The Most Distressed Man in America.

“Thanks for joining us Paul,” Peyton said going to commercial. “I’m sure you’ll look back on this as one of the great decisions of your life to be on this show and create some negative plays for your Chiefs.”

And then the fourth quarter and dear ol’ dad, glory hallelujah, Archie, who assured the boys that their mom had said it was OK for him to be on, that she’d “signed off on it.”

They asked him about the highlights of his time with the Saints and Archie said that while those weren’t many, it was interesting that “during my 11 seasons I got to play for the Saints, I had a good relationship with all seven of my head coaches during that time.”

Ahem …

But of course he loved “the journey” and “the friendships” and the “long career,” sincerely, even though the team didn’t win.

Archie was Archie, which is all he can ever be. They showed clips of Peyton “dancing” in his school play, video that hinted at his future “lack of mobility,” his dad and brother noticed. Videos of Archie and a 12-step drop back in the day, Archie scrambling, Archie passing underhanded and sidearm, Archie stories of facing the Chiefs in old Tulane Stadium and facing the Chiefs in brand new Arrowhead.

The game in Tulane Stadium was Archie’s rookie year, in preseason, and he’s scrambling all over the place and the Chiefs’ feared linebacker, Willie Lanier, told him near the end of the first half on that hot night in New Orleans, “If you run one more time,” he said, after calmly putting his hands on Manning’s chest, “I’m gonna break your neck.”

“You kind of remember those type things,” Archie said.

The game in new Arrowhead was also in preseason. “I don’t remember much about preseason games — we played six back then — but I do remember in that game I had three tackles in the first half.

“Kind of tells you,” he said, “what kind of night that was.”

Archie said he and Joe Theisman were two of the final single-bar facemask guys “until (Minnesota Hall of Fame defensive end) Alan Page planted my nose right over here by my ear; after that, I decided I needed to get a little more protection there.”

Archie had to end a couple of verbal fights by telling each of his two youngest sons to go to their rooms, which Eli said they couldn’t do, being in the middle of a TV show and all. And dad being in a different time zone.

And Peyton asked his dad if they thought something was wrong with Eli when he was born, since he weighted “only” 10 pounds and both Peyton and oldest brother Cooper each weighed 12.

“I think we kept him in the hospital a few extra days,” Archie said, playing along, then added, “The word was around the hospital that the doctor said they weighed him after he was circumcised.”

Big smiles, some head shaking and laughs, and then Eli: “Dad, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

The Saints, the team these three grew up with, didn’t make much noise in the quarter, so it left plenty of time for Archie to talk about some of the best players of his era.

Defensive linemen: Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen.

Edge rushers: Deacon Jones and Jack Youngblood.

Most intimidating: Dick Butkus. “I didn’t play against Lawrence Taylor,” he added.

And the greatest player of his era, the best all-around? “Walter Payton. Just throw everything in there. Just a great football player.”

Payton, from Mississippi like Manning, called Archie the day after Peyton’s birth to thank him for naming his second son after him. “I tried to tell him I spelled it different, that we’d named him after his uncle,” Archie said. “But he was convinced. After a while, I just let him keep believing it.”

If you ever saw Walter Payton play, you could see why they called him Sweetness.

Like watching a game with the Mannings.

Sweetness.

What a breath of football fresh air …  

The ManningCast isn’t every Monday night during the season, but it is — they are —on during each of the next four Mondays.

And you can always visit the entertaining cornucopia that is OmahaProductions.com; you must see the 10-minute ManningCast: The Musical, which you’ll probably want to watch only once — but you’ve got to see it that one time.

But especially, consider the ManningCast on Mondays. It’s entertainment. It’s a football lesson if you want it to be, but it’s also a relaxing way to watch a sometimes violent but beautiful sport, an athletic broadcast for the prince and the pauper, for the athlete and the fan, for the AFC or the NFC, for the circumcised or the uncircumcised.

It’s nuts. It’s (foot)ballsy.

It’s fun.

Sweetness.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Not many people know this because it’s tacky to brag and “smarts” is not my calling card, but I was history student of the year in eighth grade and made an “A” in Spanish as a high school freshman even though I’d never been to Spain.

Just sayin…

The catch was, I mowed the yards of both my eighth-grade history and ninth-grade Spanish teachers. You do what you can.

My grades lagged in winter; I trace this back to a hatred of raking. But I started strong in the North Louisiana autumns that felt like summer, then rallied in the early spring and right on through Memorial Day and the school year’s final bell.

As the grass rose, so did my scores.

In college, it was a different ballgame. They make you grow up in college, or you basically fail your own self. Shoot yourself in your lazy, refuse-to-be-educated foot. My teachers, who were now deemed “professors,” wouldn’t tell me and my lawnmower where they lived.

They play hardball at the university level.

In the grownup world, it’s always something.

But this teacher’s pet/yardman has proof that I was a force to be reckoned with in pre-college. If I couldn’t cut it in the classroom, I could cut it on the lawn. You play to your strengths.

Witness my freshman yearbook, signed by “Senora Mullins” in her unmistakable hand, with a squiggly thing above the “n” in senora and everything: “You MUST be OK,” she wrote; “I still like you, even though you’re my neighbor!”

Why she used the capitals and exclamation point is anybody’s guess. Did she not like her previous neighbors? Did she fail their kid? With an “A,” I asked no questions. Just said “gracias” and moved along – even though her “You MUST be OK” line, which translated into street language means “You sort of get on my nerves,” hurt me.

You must be “OK”? Tacos are OK. Mi nombre es Tedro!, or something like that. Muy bueno, babe! Come on!

“OK” is for losers.

I learned later that, from women, you take your OK’s where you can get them and learn to like it. Just part of my education, none of which would have happened without Mrs. Mullins and her tireless Sisterhood of The Classroom Teachers.

They have flooded my mind and always do with the first refreshing chill of September, these women who smelled like hand lotion and hairspray and lunchroom rolls and chalk. You’ve thought of them too, maybe not for long but always for at least a moment. Might as well try not to blink as to try and dodge the autumnal world of a long-ago yesterday. For the length of one daydream, we all go back to school this time of year.  

How did they do it? Day after day. Lunch room duty. Ball game. Sponsorship of the Interact Club. Raising three children at home and 150 at school. Yet always, The Teacher suited up.

When you see one this year, give them a nod. A fist bump. Maybe five bucks! Be an encourager. They have a long way to go and deal with short attention spans, and the best ones leave it all on the field. I praise my exhausted teachers who were, for me, a cut above.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Sports Shock of the Day No. 1: Notre Dame has suspended its men’s swimming program for at least one academic year because investigations “both internal and external” (which we think are the only kinds of investigations?) have revealed a widespread gambling issue that violated NCAA rules.

Sports Shock of the Day No. 2: Notre Dame has a men’s swimming program?

Before any fans of Irish Swimming panic, know that the Notre Dame women’s team and both diving teams are not affected by the disciplinary action. 

Sports Shock of the Day No. 3. Notre Dave has a women’s swim team and TWO diving teams?!

What is NOT shocking is that the NCAA has picked on a swimming team. And in a big way.

The NCAA didn’t tell the student-athletes to just quit running on the concrete, as our moms did back in the day at the community cement pond.

The NCAA didn’t tell the student-athletes just to rest for 30 minutes after eating that Rice Krispie Treat to safeguard against cramps. 

The NCAA didn’t tell the student-athletes to powder dry after showers to hold down the possibility of a nasty itch problem in a delicate area.

Neg. Instead, the NCAA drained the program’s pool for a whole year.

A couple of things here: 

Competitive swimming is not football or baseball or hoops in terms of fanatical popularity. BUT … it’s as hard as any other sport and much harder than some, and fans who love it REALLY love it. (Remember how, just a couple weeks ago, we couldn’t wait to see what Katie Ledecky would do next? Anyone remember Michael Phelps? Mark Spitz? Uhh … YES.)

And that’s just the swimming. We haven’t even talked yet about diving, in which the student-athlete is required to do tricks in the air BEFORE hitting the water and swimming.

When you’re talking competitive swimming and diving, you’re not talking about dogpaddling in the kiddie pool.

But what swimming IS is an easy target for the NCAA if the organization — and we use that term loosely — wants to pretend it has more than only a couple of disciplinary teeth. 

In 2021, the transfer regulations were changed to allow students in some Division I sports to transfer schools without having to sit out a year. Those rules have been altered since, most significantly this past spring when it was ruled that athletes could transfer as many times as they wished, without penalty.

In other words, the NCAA didn’t think things through thoroughly, or at all, in 2021.

Same with NIL. No guardrails. Pitch ’til you win. “Yeah, we guess that’s OK, sure…”

So college sports have totally gotten out of the NCAA’s greedy little hands. Except … 

… except when it comes to Notre Dame’s men’s swimming program, which, after a long dry spell, surfaced with its first Top-10 finish at the NCAA championships in March, a first in program history.

And here is why the NCAA stepped in: the men’s team bet on each other’s swimming performances. Over/under lines and all that. 

ND swimmer No. 1 before practice: “I bet Ricky swims the 1000m freestyle in less than 49 seconds today. Five bucks.”

Other ND swimmer, (heretofore to be called ‘ND swimmer No. 2’: “No way!”

ND swimmer No 1: “Way.”

ND swimmer No. 2: “I’ll take it!”

ND swimmer named Ricky: “That’s a lot of pressure but … here goes!”

ND swimmer No. 1: “Anybody else want some of this?…”

So stupid.

I have never been around a swim team, but I have been around golf teams and, while the great unwashed might be blissfully unaware of this, I have never seen a college golf team that didn’t “bet” before practice. Usually on the first tee. Always very casually. Like as casually as breathing. Often with carryovers from the day before and the day before that. 

Now and then a bit of money might change hands, and sometimes a payoff might be in burger or Icee form, but “bets” are all part of the game in these semi-individual contests.

There is no official sports book for swimming. Or for golf practice. Same goes, as far as I know, for college bowling or archery. And there is no danger, as far as I can see, in wagering a buck to see how fast Ricky might swim on any ordinary Tuesday or whether or not I can get it closest to the pin on a par 3 to, you know, perk up a boring day.

That’s called fun. Makes perfect sense.

But when it comes to rhyme or reason concerning the NCAA, all bets are off.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Every vote from the major TikTok Sports outlets from around the country has been tabulated, and the result is no surprise: 

Nasdaq University of Georgia A&T&M is picked to repeat as BC$ national champion — even though each member of the team agreed to a restructured contract and less money this fall for more money later.

“This will allow us to invest more money on transfers to fill immediate needs,” coach Tommy “Dough” DiCosmo said. “The restructuring of the contracts speaks to the unselfishness of this team. Humbles me as a coach. They won it all last year and they’re more than willing to wait for a few hundred thousand down the road instead of cash right now for the best chance to repeat.”

The usually unflappable DiCosmo stopped and appeared to choke back tears before saying, “It’s not the wins I’ll remember, or the championships, or the trophies … well, I mean, I WILL remember the wins and the championships and the trophies because those things got me a house off No.7 fairway and some beach property. But what I’ll also remember — besides the trophies and some pretty solid investments that should allow me to retire year after next with the lifestyle I’m accustomed to, minus the locker room smell — is how these guys were willing to take some deferred stocks instead of cash up front. ‘Unselfish’ is the word that comes to my mind.”

He stopped, gathered himself, then said, barely above a whisper, “Old school.”

“The team that pays together, stays together,” team captain and All-American linebacker CD “Low Blow” Lee said. “Word.”

Lee is one of a triplet set of linebackers on an ATM team that dominated last year. As a trio, Lee and brothers CA and CB registered more than 300 tackles.

“If there’s been a better combo of linebackers to ever play, I sure ain’t seen ’em,” defensive coordinator Bowler Johnson said. “And won’t, not in this lifetime.”

The triplets’ little brother CC anchors the secondary at strong safety. One of the bigger safeties to ever play the game, the 6-6, 225-pound baby of the Lee bunch runs a 4.4, can bench a small county and is one of the reasons opponents attempted just two passes of more than 15 yards all season. While each was completed, one resulted in a limp-off, the other in a cart-off.

The offense starts with Jimmy “No Shoes” Taylor, a barefooted wonder who confuses defenses and electrifies fans with his daring runs, rocket arm, and six-car garage. A senior from the tobacco fields of small-town Virginia, Taylor missed the first week of fall drills after wrecking his Jag on the drive from his summer home in Jackson Hole.

“He’ll be ready for the opener,” offensive coordinator and NFL Hall of Fame receiver Quincy “Eye Black” Fontenette said. “Insurance covered the Jag; also got Jimmy a new deal with an insurance company whose name I can’t say right now, but I have some pamphlets I’ll be happy to hand you after practice.”

Elo “6-Sport” Capers, everybody’s favorite running back, is healthy after having spent the summer “lifting weights, getting my shoulder back right, and rotating the tires on my Audi,” the heralded junior said. Besides football, Capers has lettered in basketball, baseball, track and field, breakdancing, and advanced/varsity trampoline.

He’s good, but the Guys Up Front might be better. The self-proclaimed Best Dressed Offensive Line in Football (each player wears a necktie during games), the ATM offensive line is anchored by center Trudell “Big Hands” Patterson and guards Blaze “Big Feet” Butler and Grayson “Big Fill-in-the-Blank” Katona. 

“Every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man,” the shy and popular Katona said. 

The offense usually plays with only one tackle, but opposing defensive coordinators will testify that at a cat-quick 7-2, 360, Moses “Where He At?” Abraham sort of counts as two guys anyway.

ATM opens the season against Wofford.

Picked to finish second this season are The New York Stock Exchange University of Alabama AT&T Fightin’ Benjamins.

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If you’ve never seen a race walk, it’s like watching a lot of discomforted people hurrying, with determined and stressful purpose, to get to the nearest bathroom.

That, you’ve seen. And experienced.

If you’ve successfully navigated such a familiar situation but you’ve never seen it as a competition but are eager to, you are in for the same feeling of relief and afterglow today. Because FINALLY — it’s here! 

I kid you not.

Today — Wednesday, August 7 — the marathon race walk mixed relay competition will be decided, over the hills and through the woods in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. 

For more than 42 kilometers, a male and female competitor will alternate every 10 kilometers or so until they’ve crossed the finish line, which in American miles is 26 and a smidge. Male-female-male-female. No baton to pass at each relay point, just a low five. Like tag team wrestling.

Will take between 4-and-a-half to 5 hours, give or take: no one knows for sure since this is an Olympic first.

This is no slap at walking. This bureau is pro-walk. Like to walk. LOVE to walk. Try to walk two or three miles a day, 10,000-steps-plus and all that. 

But casually. Not competitively. The only things I try to beat while walking are the sun and my age. 

Those of a certain age will remember race walking in black-and-white on television, either at the Olympics in the 1960s or on “Wide, Wide World of (Sometimes Walking) Sports, and Jim McKay trying to come up with something to say while, with Jim, we watched a pack of people walking as if they really, REALLY wanted to start running. 

Want a professional challenge? Try step-by-step play-by-play.

Best wishes.

Let’s face it: race walking is goofy. It requires a gait that demands you swallow your pride, and maybe a corn cob, at the door. It is not for either the faint of heart or the faint of colon.

It’s a tough sport. 

Race walking became an Olympic sport back in 1908 at the London Summer Olympics, and I can only imagine how:

“Hey, Uncle Jules, since you’re the head of the Olympic Committee this go-’round, think you can make a sport for me? I would like to compete and get a medal but methinks jumping and especially the running, by golly, that appears tiresome.”

Boom! Race walk.

Those who can, run, do; those who can’t, walk.

Alas, this seems to be a part of Olympic fever. When you watch (or more likely just hear, like me) about some of these sports, doesn’t it sound like, “Well, I did all that 50 years ago —at church camp.”

Ping pong and trampoline. Skateboarding and bicycle jumping. And the most daring, pride-swallowing stretch of all, 3-on-3 basketball. Now we are taking real sports and dividing them up? Next is 2-on-2 basketball and then 3-on-3 soccer and on it goes.

If we ARE going to have 3-on-3 Olympic basketball, it should be “call your own fouls.” How is it true 3-on-3 otherwise?

Come on guys … 

This is not an edict or proposal to do away with any of the Olympic “sports.” It’s like college football bowl games: if someone wants to play them and watch them and pay for them to be played, great. If it’s college football bowl games, I’m watching. Some of these Olympic things, neg. 

To each his own.

I’m just saying this: don’t sell this stuff to me as Real Olympics. We know that while the Alamo Bowl is a college bowl game, it’s not one of the Big Six bowl games. And while breakdancing is called an Olympic sport now, it’s not the 100m or the 4×400. To paraphrase, don’t walk on me and tell me you’re running.  

For the record, Americans aren’t walkers of the Olympic variety. We scored a silver back in Antwerp in ’20 (NINETEEN 20) and a couple of bronze deals 50 years ago. In the individual 20-kilometer competitions last week, the winners were from Ecuador and China. Took between 80 to 85 minutes to walk the 12-and-a-half American miles.

That’s booking it for a walk, between 8 and 9 miles per hour.

The Americans? We didn’t walk. And we ain’t medley walking today, either. We’ll be running and jumping.

Anyway, that’s it. Gotta run…

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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Olympics News hot off the press: 

There was a danger that our world-class American athletes competing in the 2024 Summer Games from Paris might not have air-conditioning.

No one loves the “good ol’ days” more than me. AM radio and Tammy Wynette. Screen doors. Front porches. Movies with dialogue. The only travel ball was in the major leagues.

Old days were the best — EXCEPT for automatic banking, streaming channels, and air-conditioning. And the leadoff hitter of those three is AC.

Has to be. Game-changer. 

So why no AC in Paris at the Olympics?

If you are an American who enjoys, even celebrates, seeing our country win at anything, and if you are an American who is spoiled rotten when it comes to air-conditioning, this less-than-thrilling and less-than-chilling news that our athletes might have to sleep in a France toaster is enough to make you break out in a cold sweat. 

Or a hot sweat. (Sometimes I get my sweats confused.)

The Games open today with football (we call it soccer), rugby sevens (no idea), handball (some idea but not really), archery (some idea: cowboy movies when I was little), shooting (pretty good idea, unfortunately, since I can read a newspaper), and Friday, FINALLY, the Opening Ceremony and badminton (some idea: church camp) and rowing (some idea: fishing).

If you miss the start, not an issue. We still have two wonderful weeks of swimming, diving, fencing, gymnasticsing, boxing, taekwondoing, cycling, weightlifting, pentathloning, “modern” pentathloning, basketballing, canoe sprinting (what the …?), sport climbing, running, jumping, and watching Coca-Cola and Visa commercials.

And, if the Americans are lucky, sleeping between winning golds.

Sleeping during a period of competition is no side chick or fling. Sleeping is part of who brought you to the party. Sleeping is your Main Thang. Gotta sleep.

This notion escaped the French.

They’d decided years ago that these Games would be the most eco-friendly and “greenest” ever, which is fine. Their plan to cut in half the carbon footprint of a “normal” Olympics was admirable — right up until the architects insisted that their non-AC, “energy-efficient geothermal cooling system” of water and pipes and wishes would keep the athletes’ rooms no warmer than 26 Celsius — which is a sultry 79 Fahrenheit in Indoor America.

To which the American coaches and athletes said, “NEG!”

The high temp in Paris during July and August averages 78. Child’s play for the American southerner, for sure. BUT …

We are a habit-driven people. I grew up in a two-story that had a window unit downstairs and a window that opened upstairs. Slept great. But once the world introduced us to central air, nighttime became a different ballgame. 

In rural America, we got used to AC. Really fast.

Expand that rationale for the world-class athlete who has slept at a certain temperature nearly their whole lives in preparation for the Olympics, the most important “athletic days” of their lives. The “optimal bedroom sleep micro-environment” for the Team USA competitor, one of our team physiologists told yahoo!/sports, is 61-65 degrees.

So when the Paris mayor insisted Olympic Village athletes would be “very comfortable” at “no warmer than 79,” athletes from the USA, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Greece, Japan, Australia and the like said, “Comfortable compared to WHAT?”

So those countries have either brought their own portable air-conditioners or are renting ones the French organizers have made available. No one wanted to come off as a spoiled or ungrateful visitor: they just didn’t want to be sweating in their PJs on the eve of running the 100. 

Many countries — Germany, Tonga, Samoa, plus the Swiss and French come to mind — don’t need or aren’t used to AC. They’re chill without it.

To each his own.

And that’s the point. We really are creatures of habit. Hey, the French gave us chocolate and perfume and the beret and fries. They meant no harm with the AC thing. But if the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre were in Kansas or Richmond or Shreveport, you can bet your last shred of Brie or Roquefort that they’d be air-conditioned. Set around 68, at the highest.

Have a great (and cool) Olympics!

(PS — the diff between the “pentathlon” and the “modern pentathlon”?; the modern one is air-conditioned.)

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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We all gotta start somewhere, and since it was exactly what I’d always hoped to do plus paid a smooth $250 a week plus was the only job offer I had, I started my “career” as a sportswriter at “The Longview News-Journal” in East Texas 40 years ago this summer, 24, ready for a fight, proud to have health and dental.

And a free daily paper.

Louisiana Tech had coached me up as best it could, even graduate school and all. As an assistant in sports information, I’d had the chance to cover ball and meet the state’s ink-stained wretches and had what I thought was a hard-boiled idea of what the sportswriting world was like. Had worked on the school paper, served as a stringer for ballgames and features, even talked to the Associated Press guys. On deadline.

Lots of time on the IBM Selectric.

Plus I knew how to work. Had done it since I was a little fella. Cucumber picking. Corn scratching. Tractor driving. Tobacco hanging. Grass mowing.

Had every reason to be confident. Big reader. Great teachers. Professional journalistic role models of the highest order in Keith Prince and Wiley Hilburn.

But I was scared to death.

Funny what you remember. I turned onto I-20 from Exit 82 in Ruston, the Tech exit, and noticed a brown roper, a cowboy boot, had fallen out of the bed of my truck onto the shoulder. Thought I’d packed everything in better than that, and still wonder why it had caught my eye in the passenger mirror, my roper tumbling out. Even as I got out and stuffed it back in, I remember thinking I would never forget that moment, me trying to be a rookie professional — and things falling out before I’d even left town.

But John Inman, God rest his cheery, patient soul, was there to meet me in Longview. He loved to eat and we made the rounds during the suppertime break, it being summer and no high school football or basketball or baseball games to cover. Don’t know about today, but 40 years ago, a man could eat fine in Longview. Burgers & Fries. The Butcher Shop. A cafeteria or two.

Every morning, I’d sit outside my apartment by a swimming pool and read our Longview paper, “The Dallas Morning News,” and “The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.”

I’d seldom had it so good.

1984 was the summer the Detroit Tigers started their season 35-5, the subject of one of Mr. Inman’s questions during my job interview, which lasted almost a whole minute.

“What about those Detroit Tigers?” he said.

“Hot as grandma’s skillet,” I said.

He asked if I could start Tuesday.

It was the summer of the Olympics in Los Angeles, Mary Lou Retton and Greg Louganis and Mary Decker, a middle-distance runner and, along with Retton, an American Sweetheart. But she tripped and fell four laps into the 3,000 meters and there the iconic photo of her all alone, clutching her ankle or some leg part, in tears, and I wrote a column from two time zones away, “The Queen Has Fallen,” or something ridiculous like that.

Country come to town.

It was the summer the Cincinnati Reds retired the number of Johnny Bench, who’d played the final game of his Hall of Fame career the fall before, and I wrote a column that ended, “Thanks, Number 5, for the memories,” or some such. I think Mr. Inman didn’t edit that out, just to teach me a lesson about maybe not being a sappy idiot in words and whatnot. “Thanks for the memories” and cue the soap opera music…

Good lord help us all.

The only “live” event I covered all summer was the Longview City Golf Championships, and hopefully I got the winner’s name and score correct. And there was the Green Bay at Dallas preseason scrap, not exactly The Game of the Century.

But what a time it was. I learned a lot, pasting up the paper at midnight, hanging with fellow young bucks Olin and Kyle, who are still in the business, and with David, who I’ve lost touch with but who is likely out there somewhere smiling and being big and all muscled up and looking a lot more like a linebacker than a sportswriter.

Mr. Inman did what he could with us. What a blessing. Even with a weekly check of $197 and change, after taxes. Money ain’t everything.

Thanks, guys, for the memories …

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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While the passing of Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda at 86 last week didn’t cause much of a stir around here, we’re betting some long-time St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves fans, the youngest now in their mid-60s like me, stopped eating their oatmeal and rubbing on Icy Hot long enough to have a moment of silence.

1969 was a big year for me and guys my age, an interesting year to turn 10. Vietnam. Apollo 11 and man landing on the moon. Sesame Street. Woodstock. And just when a guy like me in South Carolina’s backwoods had figured out there were other big towns besides Atlanta and that those towns also had baseball teams, suddenly a whole other country (Canada) was in the mix, thanks to the newborn Montreal Expos.

1969 was a lot to deal with.

Orlando Cepeda was no small part of the mix. You would think a Puerto Rican first baseman would have no real lasting impact on a kid from Dillon County. 

You would be wrong.

Just the year before, me and fellow 9-year-old Jay Calhoun, the best pure pool shooter I’d ever seen and still have ever seen, had begun to understand geography and baseball on a much larger scale. Mr. Rozier, our school principal and once a boy himself, got us out of class, swore us to secrecy, and let us watch some of the 1968 World Series on a black-and-white set behind the curtain on the stage of the auditorium/cafeteria at Lake View Elementary.

God rest his wonderful soul.

By then, despite a few of our visits to his office after recess hijinks, he understood we were relatively bright boys — “relatively” being the key word — who loved baseball and were beginning to understand “the world” beyond our county and Six Flags in that far off region called “Georgia.” He also knew we loved Al Kaline and Bob Gibson.

It was an exciting time to be alive.

So by 1969, when the baseball season began, we were dug in. And the nearby Braves, having acquired the 1967 National League MVP Cepeda in the offseason, were poised to make a run for the big prize. 

Cepeda was now 31, an “old man” on the Braves roster who’d been starting in the star-spangled outfield for San Francisco since he was 20. His nickname was “Baby Bull.” According to grainy pictures both on the tiny Sylvania and in “The Sporting News,” he was handsome and studly, long and muscularly lean.

For a 10-year-old used to looking at corn and hogs, it was difficult not to love him.

Cepeda and his worsening knees at first. Felix “The Kitten” Milan at second, Sonny Jackson at short and Clete Boyer at The Hot Corner. Rico Carty, Felipe Alou and Hammerin’ Hank across the outfield. Phil Niekro won 23 games and probably would have won the Cy Young if Tom Seaver and the New York Mets hadn’t picked that Summer of ’69 to become immortal.

Our own north Louisiana pitching heroes George Stone and Cecil Upshaw were on that Atlanta team too, something that wouldn’t matter so much to me until we moved to West Monroe in 1973 and there was George Stone of Ruston pitching on my television set, this time for the Mets and this time in a World Series the Oakland mini-dynasty would win.

Years later I would meet a writer who became a friend; he was a boy growing up in the South that summer too. His dad lost his job and the TV went on the fritz and he broke his arm, the Bad Luck Trifecta. The silver lining was that his limited entertainment options involved the radio, Milo Hamilton on the play-by-play and Ernie Johnson on the color, and he sat by the window as the attic fan sucked in a breeze that kept the AC-free home semi-tolerable, and while his arm healed, he listed to Baby Bull hit 22 dingers and knock in 88 as the Braves won the division before losing to the Mets in the first NL Championship Series in baseball’s 100-year history.

Funny what baseball makes you remember.

(And NOT remember. The Braves had traded Joe Torre, their catcher in 1968, to the Cardinals for Cepeda; even I remembered that as Torre would go on to be an NL MVP (in 1971), and I loved the Cardinals. So who caught for the ’69 Braves? Had to look it up: Bob Didier from Hattiesburg, son of the famous scout Mel and nephew of longtime Louisiana college baseball coach Raymond. Mel and Raymond are among the three sets of brothers who are members of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Life’s a circle …) 

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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A Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer for less than 12 hours, Ray Sibille sat on the couch in the lobby of the cozy Church Street Inn on a heat-em-up Sunday morning by the Cane River, his smile modest and sincere, bright as the morning sunshine.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “Everything’s been so wonderful. Just perfect. What a weekend…”

Just out of the elevator and around the corner comes Pat Day, a Colorado native and National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame inductee in 1991, in Natchitoches for the weekend, for his buddy Sibille. More handshakes and smiles.

Somewhere within their gravitational pull was Eddie Delahoussaye of New Iberia, a 2002 LASHOF inductee and a man who was almost as happy with Sibille’s induction as Sibille himself. Throw in Day and, between the three, you can count about 15,000 wins and $250 million in winnings.

Lot of money. Lot of winner’s circles. But to be a part of the Class of 2024, that seemed for Sibille to override all the rides around all the tracks.

“I thought I might go into the Hall a dozen years ago with Eddie,” Sibille said. “Then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I wasn’t quite good enough.’ But you know what? God’s timing is better than mine.

“If I’d have gone in then, my first grandson would be this big,” he said, pretending to hold a baby to his shoulder and pat it on the back. “And my other one wouldn’t be born yet. Now they’re both here and …”

What he didn’t say said it all. He just smiled. Pat Day smiled.

Through the glass front of the Church Street Inn, the bright sun poured through.

Saturday night’s audience in the Special Events Center behind the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame & Northwest Louisiana History Museum was among the largest and most receptive in the history of the Induction Ceremonies. Such a beautiful crowd. Smiles and laughter and a deep appreciation not only for the accomplishments of the inductees, but even more so for the personalities themselves, for the people who through a combination of genes and talent and work ethic and fate, found themselves in the glow of a night they won’t forget.

A few, like Sibille, had to stop for just a moment during their brief induction interviews Saturday might, stop and gather their emotions when they thanked some of the many people who helped each of them realize their dream.

The first inductee, Bobby Ardoin, set the tone when he cried, for just a moment, thanking his adoptive parents who, it turns out, raised a tireless educator and writer. “They let me do just about anything I wanted,” Bobby said to laughs. (They raised a good one.)

Grambling icon Wilbert Ellis brought about 200 fans with him (no exaggeration) and did not disappoint as he accepted the Ambassador Award, only the second ever awarded. In his acceptance interview, he preached respect and education, (and “preached” is used as a metaphor here, but just barely). Love Coach Ellis.

When he was a young coach, Class of 2024 inductee Frank Monica saw his Lutcher football team’s 27-0 winning streak snapped in the Class AAA 1976 semifinals by Jesuit, now Loyola, of Shreveport. At Lutcher, too. But after the game, Monica came into the winners’ locker room, got on a bench and told the Flyers how proud he was of them, congratulated them on how good of a team they were, and wished them a state championship — which they won the next week at Winnfield. So he lost with class — but he had plenty of opportunities to win with class, too: he’d go on to coach three different schools to three state titles. And all weekend in Natchitoches, he and his family beamed and spread the humor and humility.

Seimone Augustus. Perry Clark. Kevin Jackson. Kerry Joseph. Every inductee present radiated a sincerity and graciousness no one could fake. Go see them sometime. They’ll be waiting for you, in the Hall.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

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