Bad sports, good sports: Football is back, for better or for worse
I planned to lead with a Good Sports story this week, talking about the fact that football is back. I love football, and the start of football season is very exciting for me. I had plans to wax poetic on the beauty of the game, from the joy of watching a well-executed offense to the exhilaration of the jarring hits and intensity of a strong defense. I planned this even though both my college team (Penn State) and my pro team (the Eagles) were not expected to win this weekend. Penn State, while they should be good this year, was playing top-ranked Alabama in Tuscaloosa and starting a true freshman quarterback, while the Eagles were beginning a new era, with Kevin Kolb taking over as quarterback from the departed Donovan McNabb, and playing against the Green Bay Packers, a fashionable choice to go deep into the playoffs this season. I was not planning to watch only those two games, though. My football weekends are made up of many games and multiple televisions, with some baseball and NASCAR mixed in as well.
Now that it has come to it, though, I am not sure this will turn out to be Good Sports. Sure, I enjoyed the fact that football has returned. The Penn State game was disappointing, but as I said, expectations were low for this game. The Eagles game is what has thrown me off. I have been looking forward to the beginning of the Kevin Kolb era since the Eagles traded McNabb this spring. I believe that it will take a while before the offense hums under Kolb, just as it would with any new quarterback. I have written previously about how it was time for the Eagles to move on from McNabb, even if it meant taking a step back for a while. Sunday afternoon, Kolb and the Eagles looked bad during a poor first half. The real problem came when Kolb suffered a concussion just before halftime. After the intermission, out came backup QB Michael Vick to lead the team. I still find it extremely difficult to root for Vick in any way. I hate the idea of him being our quarterback. Yes, he played decently and got the Eagles back into the game, but that is actually the source of my angst. Now, all of the people who were writing off Kolb before the season even started will start ranting about how Vick should be the starter. To those people, I say this: we will not win anything with Michael Vick. Just as it was decided that, as good as Donovan McNabb was, we were not going to win a Super Bowl with him, this team would be making a huge mistake to hitch its wagon to Vick. No, I don’t know if Kolb is the long-term answer. I do know that Andy Reid, who has proven time and time again that he knows more about football than the fans do, decided that he liked Kolb so much that he was willing to trade McNabb. He never said success would be immediate. This season needs to be a learning experience for Kolb, and the fans need to understand that it would be better to have a losing record and have a quarterback who is learning and improving for the future than it would be to go 9-7 and squeak into the playoffs, only to get sent home in the first round ilke the Eagles did last year.
Despite all of this inner turmoil, I did enjoy the weekend. It’s football season. With apologies to Santa, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Bad sports, continued:
2) Notre Dame lost to Michigan on Saturday. This was a rough game for me, as I have no interest in rooting for either of those teams. The worst part of the game was a showboating play by a Notre Dame receiver that became a terrible non-call by the officials. T.J. Jones was headed for the end zone after a long catch and run. The would-be touchdown became a shouldn’t-be touchdown when Jones tossed the ball forward the way players sometimes do when they score. The problem was that Jones was not yet in the end zone. This should have been called a touchback and Michigan should have had the ball at their own 20-yard line. Instead, the touchdown counted. Embarrassing all around.
3) Speaking of embarrassing, watch this shootout goal scored in the Moroccan soccer playoffs. Seems like players should finish their plays before celebrating.
Good Sports:
1) Former MLB pitcher Bill Lee, known as much for his wacky antics as for his pitching back in the seventies and eighties, started a game last week for the Brockton Rox, an independent league baseball team in Massachusetts. Lee is 63, and pitched 5 1/3 effective endings to get the win.
2) Kevin Durant is underrated, in my opinion. The young basketball star, who plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA, led the U.S team to the gold medal of the World Championship tournament being held in Turkey. The highlight of his performance was his 38 point outburst in the semi-final game against Lithuania. Before too long, I believe he will be seen as the best player in the NBA.
3) We’ve all seen players and managers ejected from a baseball game. I know that I, for one, have never seen a fan thrown out, though. Sure, I have seen fans thrown out by ushers. Never by an umpire, though. A Brewers fan had been heckling the Cardinals’ catcher from his seat behind the plate on Tuesday, and umpire Bob Davidson decided he had heard enough, ejecting the fan from the game. Having witnessed a lot of abusive fan commentary directed at players, I applaud Davidson’s action here.
Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday.
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Eh … ya want bad sports? … I’ll give ya bad sports. So far, my alma mater’s football team (the University of New Mexico Lobos), have given up 124 points … and we’re only two games into the season!
I feel your pain. I would be tormented by the Kolb-Vick dilemma too. Vick will win you some games — maybe even a lot of them, and maybe even the division title — but you’re right, he doesn’t have the leadership intangibles or the dropback passing skills necessary to win a Super Bowl.
But I watched every minute of that game and was shocked at how inefficient Kolb was. The Packers were really vulnerable — their “starting” nickel back, Sam Shields, is an undrafted rookie free agent who only played cornerback one year at Miami. To me, it’s a really bad sign that Kolb wasn’t able to exploit him.
From my perspective as a Packers fan, though, I love it. And I love it even more that the Packers D — which was clearly thrown off guard when Vick became the focal point of the offense — didn’t crumble completely.
Do you know that Kennedy was president the last time we won in Philly? The small-town Packers never do well in the hostile environs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Eagles fans were using sling shots to lob eggs at the Packers as they boarded the bus to the airport Sunday evening. (Tame compared to the booing of Punt, Pass & Kick contests and the cheering due to a potentially paralyzed Michael Irvin, I know, but these hijinks never happen in say, Kansas City.)
If it’s any consolation, though, you guys still have a QB named Kafka, right?
There’s no Hemingways, Faulkners or Tolstoys in the NFC North. (Although Ernie Hemingway loved to fish and booze it up in my favorite part of the world, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.)
Jeff – ugh! That’s a lot of points!
Michael – you just had to take the shot, huh? It’s OK. We can take it. The Irvin thing was a couple of loud idiots. As far as Punt, Pass, and Kick….well, if they suck, they deserve to be booed. Don’t go out there if you can’t take it. We take things seriously here, amateur or not.