Category Archives: Sports

Keep Up Tradition

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Editor’s Note: Writing a goodbye column was a tradition at The University Daily, the campus paper at Texas Tech University. And I probably wrote mine in a huff. Too many ads. Not enough editorial space. Why my editor, Inez Russell, didn’t calf-tie me and leave me in a forgotten barn, I’ll never know. Thank you for not finding the keys to the school van. From the May 4, 1982, edition of the UD, a long-seasoned vanity piece.

HIGHWAY 84 – I guess it’s time to shut the book on an era. The wild and carefree columns of the past will make like my grade point and fade away. No more columns about filling 32 inches of space in the newspaper. No more columns about Tech students going on strike demanding easier courses and less-stringent grading policies. Even Ol’ Dusty may have seen his last Tech-Arkansas football game.

Tradition is dying out, folks.

Despite claims by the Latin faculty, I’m not very old. But when you’re 21 and have four years of higher learning tucked away in a copy of Sports Illustrated, some of the newer students look upon you as if you were Will Rogers’ statue – a Tech fixture. The baseball players can’t imagine anyone but you covering their team, and the other sports writers can’t remember when anyone but you finished last in Fearless Forecasters.

But how old can you be when you’re in college. The life is as carefree as you’ll ever experience. I can remember when Tech had a winning football team. When the basketball team participated in post-season tournaments. When a night of intramural basketball was spent at the Intramural Gym. And when Applause was one of the hottest clubs in Lubbock.

Now my catalog tells me I have enough hours to graduate, so I should leave Tech and make something of myself. Administration said I should grow up while I was at it. I was grown up when I entered college. I just regressed as the years progressed.

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No One Puts Salsa in the Corner

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Editor’s Note: I wrote the following a couple of years ago, but before I posted, the furor died. And I lost interest. Then a pandemic struck. And with it came idle time. So I dusted off the piece and considered recently acquired context. A fall trip to Pigeon Forge, TN, and a visit to a souvenir shop filled with “I Stand Before the Flag, and Kneel Before the Cross” merchandise. Some folks don’t let go. And they had baby goats.

Can I Pet the Goats?

You’re watching the NFL on television and see players kneel during the national anthem. Or raise a fist. Or discover some remained in the tunnel or locker room. Your blood boils. You’re miffed. You’re insulted. Those pampered athletes, with perfect abs – that’s what’s really in your craw – who make seven-figure incomes, adored by men and women alike, who play a child’s game, are insulting those who serve in the military.

You don’t buy into civil disobedience. The players say they protest to bring awareness to racial injustice. You say folderol. They say discrimination remains a plague on society and want to use their platform, before millions of viewers, to remind us of its existence. You say anything outside of standing at attention during the national anthem is unpatriotic. Both sides cry out they’re exercising their First Amendment rights.

So you boycott the NFL. Sunday afternoons trashed because your house no longer is filled with family and friends watching their beloved team. Adults who didn’t pay attention during high school civics, who can’t recall the number of stripes on Old Glory, who can’t explain the difference between a crossing pattern and a down-and-out. No more fans staring with contempt at one another. Some with Pat Boone singing “America” as a ring tone glaring at those with degrees in Belgian literature.

Honey? More El Diablo Tango sauce for the wings?

So you’ve made up your mind. No more NFL. No way you’re supporting an organization that stands by while its players insult the military, the flag and Pat Boone. You can’t spell discrimination, much less pronounce it, and deep down know the protest isn’t about the military. But you go with the crowd because everyone supports puppies, the elderly and the military. The POTUS even backs you. And we all know he wouldn’t use cultural drama to distract from his ongoing soap opera.

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