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football

What do ladders, Olympics and football have in common?

I have older memories. I remember a few things that happened in the place where we lived when I was four. That’s about where it starts for me. And it is increasingly foggy up until about … I dunno … 15 minutes ago.

Sometimes I wonder about the false memories. The oldest memory I have, as I have described it, didn’t actually exist. We never lived in a place with a yard like that, I’m told. Did I see Empire Strikes Back in the theater? Or was it a re-release of the original Star Wars? Do I remember the I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke campaign? It started long before I was born, but did it run long enough for me to eventually notice? Or was that some reproduction?

Picking out what is right and what is wrong on the conveyor belt of your brain is like pulling getting that one bad grape. Squishy and bitter. And it puts you ill at ease about the next grape, too. Ancient memory is a tricky thing, but for as long as I can recall I’ve wanted bookshelves with a ladder attached to them:

I have a lot of books. We turned a room in our home into a library. It has a fireplace. This is serious. We have bookshelves in other rooms because there isn’t enough room in the library. And yet we still don’t have enough books for the bookshelf ladders. You can’t have one. You need at least two. That’s the mark of a good library.

I saw that one in a bookstore today. We hit two today, after a late breakfast. I found the book I wanted at the second bookstore. It wasn’t on the shelf at the first place, but I did see an employee playing checkers on his computer. It was slow. Bookstores here will pick up in the next few days, though, when the college kids come back to town.

You know who doesn’t come back? Anything to Olympic venues. Surf around and you’ll find plenty of complaints about facilities rusting away in Beijing or going to seed in Greece. Apparently they aren’t even showing up to begin with in London:

After a week of unusually quiet streets, idling cabs and easily navigated shops, fears of the Gridlock Games have transformed into complaints about the Ghost Town Olympics.

Experts say tens of thousands of foreign tourists without tickets to the Olympic Games appear to have decided to skip London, bowing to official warnings of stifling overcrowding — a forecast that ignored the lessons of other Olympic host cities that have emptied out during the Games over the past 20 years. In even larger numbers, these experts say, Britons themselves, including tens of thousands who normally commute to work in London, have heeded official appeals and stayed home.

Aside from that timeless crutch of the lazy journalist, “experts say” there are plenty of lessons here. The biggest two are maybe it is a good thing Chicago didn’t get the Games. Maybe bids should be limited to cities with the venues already in place or cities … elsewhere. Boondoogle: not in my backyard.

By the way. I wrote last week about Auburn’s first Olympians. Here is a picture of the first one, Snitz Snyder, taken from the 1928 Glomerata.

He ran in the 400 meter race in 1928. If he had the race of his life — the race he qualified with was a national record, 48 seconds — he might have made the medal stand. For comparison: the world record in 1928 was 47 seconds and the U.S. record today is 43.18.

Snyder came home and became a legendary coach in Bessemer, Ala. He has a football stadium named after him today. The gentleman standing next to him is the great track coach Wilbur Hutsell. The Auburn track and field facilities are named in his honor.

I did a bit of hasty counting today. At one point this afternoon Auburn athletes, as a nation, would have ranked 44th on the all time Olympic medal list. The Tigers are coming after YOU, Kazakhstan. This list doesn’t, of course, count the Jimmy Carter 1980 Games. There were a few guys on that U.S. Olympic roster projected to compete for medals in Moscow. Impressive stuff for a university.

One other Olympic note of limited use, the most retweeted thing I wrote on Twitter today: NASA is landing something on a DIFFERENT PLANET and airing it live. Your move, NBC.

You start noticing third party effects when people you’ve never heard of start retweeting you. When you see it more than a few times you start to wonder about it. I ran that Tweet through a tracker and found it reached something like 28,000 accounts. Of course not all of those people were online at the time, but that’s still a nice statistic for a piece of sarcasm. The conclusion, we’re all happy to complain about NBC.

I began following this Smithsonian blog on Tumblr last week. (Follow my Tumblr, too!) They are quick hits, and mostly pictures. I traded out a few other sites for this one. (I’m trying to cut back.) But this one is worth seeing, and this post today proved it. The person that uploaded it asked “What’d be going through your mind in this photo moment?”

I’d be thinking This is the GREATEST thing that has EVER happened to me!

There aren’t enough explanation points in that air tank. I’d suck it down to 200 pounds in no time.

Speaking of photo essays, the best one of the week is from a Birmingham toddler.

It rained today. Hard. Almost like this:

When the real serious rains blow through now we think about the 2009 West Virginia game. I wrote about that and have some nice pictures to memorialize the day. (Rain was in the forecast and I wisely left my big camera at home that night.) We sat in that over-crowded concourse for an awfully long time and I wondering: How many places could you be crushed like this for … almost an hour now and watch all of these people maintain their good spirits? Not many, I’d bet.

Is it football season yet? We’re only about four weeks away …

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1
Aug 12

Carl Stephen, famed announcer of Jordan-Hare Stadium, dies at 77

When I was in undergrad at Auburn, the Tigers clinched the 1997 SEC West division championship in the last home game of the season. For many, many years they’ve been very strict about people running onto that gorgeous green grass, the fans stayed in place, but things got away from “stadium officials” that night. A goalpost was torn down by the players and went into the student body.

No one had left the student section that night. Our revelry was in the stands, and with the players who climbed up on the low wall. That goalpost got into the crush of students. People in the end zone seats were passing it, overhead, to the people behind them. The goalpost made it all the way up to the lip of the stadium. It was going over.

And this voice, this beautiful basso profondo voice reproduced only in heaven and Jordan-Hare Stadium, instructed the students to put the goalpost down. Do not throw it over the side of the stadium.

That authoritative voice cut through the delirium and that goalpost worked its way back down through the students and to the field again.

That was the commanding presence of Carl Stephens. Whether everyone there knew him — many did — or whether they just respected the voice of Jordan-Hare Stadium and Auburn football, they knew of him.

He sounded like this.

That was his last home opener, in 2005, against Georgia Tech. He retired the following spring. I had the great pleasure of interviewing him on his long career as a broadcaster in Montgomery — where he was a familiar face for a third of the state, working almost his entire career at WSFA-TV — and a legend in the loveliest village. These audio clips are from that interview at al.com.

Carl Stephens on how is long career with Auburn began.

Carl Stephens on how they produced the football highlight show.

Carl Stephens on calling a game as a public address announcer.

Carl Stephens on exciting moments.

Carl Stephens’ memorable highlights, referencing the 1996 LSU at Auburn game.

Carl Stephens on games that fans talk to him about, including the 1983 Iron Bowl at Legion Field.

Carl Stephens on his favorite parts of game day.

Carl Stephens on his favorite memories.

In addition to his work at WSFA, the old highlight show in the 60s and 70s with Ralph “Shug” Jordan, and his time calling regular season sports at Auburn, he called 15 SEC football championship games, 14 SEC basketball tournaments, six SEC baseball tournaments and numbers NCAA basketball tournament games.

He was a very kind man, giving of his time, friendly to all and humble almost beyond comparison. When I called him upon his retirement he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to interview him. It sincerely took him back. He’d been an icon for more than four decades by then.

I couldn’t wait to talk shop with him. I was fortunate enough to call games for two years at UAB at the turn of the century. When I interviewed Stephens in 2005 I asked him how much of a game he remembered when he left the stadium. It was gratifying to know he often couldn’t recall the flow because he was so absorbed in doing his job. I’d felt that way, but now the consummate professional was telling me it happened to him, too. Most telling, considering all he’d seen, he maintained his favorite part of working those games was meeting so many people.

Carl Stephens was a gentleman at every turn. He was one of the last few bridges to a golden era at Auburn. He went home this evening at the age of 77, survived by his beautiful wife Mary, children Richard and Sandra, several grandchildren and thousands of fans, friends and Auburn family. For many of them, his voice was football.

Richard told me tonight that his father “truly, truly was” that kind and humble man the rest of us thought we knew. That’s a son’s pride and sorrow. That and the many eulogies shared about him now tell the story: we’ve lost another great Auburn man.

Drive home safely, and War Eagle.

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21
Jul 12

Cabin fever

I’d really like to get out of the house.

This morning I watched the time trial, the penultimate day of the Tour de France, and fell asleep halfway through. I nodded off during a bike race I’ve been watching for three weeks. (I slept just over seven hours last night, too, which is the most in a long time.) I had lunch over a History Channel documentary. We watched the 2010 LSU at Auburn game off the complete season DVD set. I took a picture of Cam Newton’s almost mythical run off the television screen. The announcers said “Oh did he accelerate!” and “Enjoy a young man fulfilling his athletic potential.”

I love that it is a little bit less than sharp, just like our memories. Here, then, are the pictures I took and things I wrote at the actual game.

The Yankee gave me the DVD set of the 2010 perfect season as a Christmas gift this year. We’ve been working our way through that magical year over the summer. Every week we start the game and I say “I hope Auburn wins!” Then the Tigers win and we say “War Eagle!” and “Merry Christmas!” Great gift, right?

And then, Batman Begins! When that ended, on another channel, The Dark Knight! My lovely bride made dinner, putting delicious salmon on the grill. I took a picture of it:

I really need to get out of the house. And, also, I need to be able to walk around for more than five minutes without my shoulder and collarbone killing me.

And now, to end on a more positive note, something cute:

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16
Jun 12

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Spent a couple of hours on my bike today. (Sounds so nice I want to do it again.) I waited until the afternoon sun was dying out and the heat and the ultraviolet weren’t so oppressive and then I set out for a three stage ride. I cruised over to Opelika, intent on picking up a few more pictures for the Historic Marker Series.

As you may know — or if you don’t know or if you’ve just come back from that link and would like your assumptions confirmed — I’m hitting all of the markers in the county on my bike. I found the locations on the historical society’s website. I made a map, which heads up that page. But I’ve learned that between the descriptions and my best guesses there’s sometime a bit of discrepancy. So I’m fixing the map as I go, but I’m also spending a lot of time just cruising around looking for the signs.

So the second stage of today’s ride was riding around the downtown area of Opelika. This was little more than soft pedaling between red lights and looking confused. There were eight markers downtown. I found that I’d placed four or five accurately on my map.

I found them all. And the biggest inaccuracy was no more than a mile or two off. (That one was purely a guess anyway, so it wasn’t a mistake so much as having no real idea to begin with.) But I found them all. I dat on a bench in the shade in Opelika and had a little snack. I took all of my pictures and then pointed toward home, catching that last one on the way. Turns out I go by it every so often, but I’d never noticed it.

I also found two more signs. The ones I’m photographing are by either the state or the Chattahoochee Commission. The extras were put up by a tourism board and a church. But I was there. I had the chance to read them. Why not?

So I’ll add those to that section of the site eventually too, as always, one a week, on Thursdays.

The third stage of my ride was the return trip home. The sun was falling and the route I’d planned involved a lot of tree cover — meaning darker even a bit earlier — and I had no blinkies on my bike. In cycling the expression is to “put the hammer down.” That doesn’t apply to me, but I put it down anyway.

I average 24 miles per hour over the last eight miles, making it home just before the sky grayed.

And then we worked on paper ideas. Now we just have to write the paper. Meantime, we’re enjoying homemade muffins with fresh picked, locally grown blueberries. I think even the cinnamon was fair trade. It sounds far more ostentatious than it really is. But it is also more delicious than it sounds.

Best story detail of the day:

Leftfielder Nick Clark hustled in, trying to catch a sinking line drive.

“I ran up and at the very end I said, ‘OK, we’ll sacrifice my body,'” Clark said.

Clark went into a diving slide. He caught the ball.

He lost his leg.

The rest of us? We’ve lost the privilege of complaining about aches and pains for the rest of the day.

And, with the death this morning of Rodney King, the Associated Press published their Where Are They Now feature on some of the key players of his beating and the later riots. Some of these aren’t surprising at all.

Years ago I dropped my subscription to Newsweek because of a stupid cover story. And now you can see the latest cover that wasn’t. It was to be an image of President Obama in a hoodie. Here’s why they didn’t publish it:

In the old days, a cover is a cover, and that was it. Today, she says, there’s an “aftermath of imagery” one must take into consideration. Will this cover be used by white supremacists? Will it take a bad turn in its meme lifecycle?

This was to be one of their new artistic covers, because a news photograph is no longer desirable. But Diana of Wales, were she alive today, now that, they think, will move magazines! They get people to talk about the magazine occasionally, but they do nothing for news, or to buttress the once proud reputation of the old magazine. Issue sales are stagnant or barely moving. Advertising is sadly way down. Putting the president in a hoodie isn’t going to help those things.

We’re watching the Clemson-Auburn 2010 game tonight. (I hope Auburn wins!) I’m not sure how they pulled this game off. Clearly the purple and orange set clearly played better in the first half of the game and, if memory serves, for the better part of the third quarter as well. But they never quit, and there was a big hit (there were a lot of those in this game) that limited Clemson’s quarterback. And then that heartbreaking, for them, overtime experience.

Clemson came to play that Saturday night, and they gave the eventual national champions one of the three biggest scares of the year. I talked to some of their fans after the game. That was exactly how they expected the game to play out: a strong start before they found a way to give the game to Auburn.

I took pictures of that game. Had a few good ones, too. You can see some of them here. Watching it tonight, the 2011 beatdown that Clemson gave Auburn is a lot less surprising.

The two teams start the season against one another this fall in Atlanta.

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12
Jun 12

Just current events

If I may wrap my head around the journalism of our big shooting story — and this is my site, so I say that I can — I’ll recall something I said to The Yankee on Sunday. She was driving as we headed home from our rafting excursion. I was reading aloud the emerging news on the Saturday night shooting.

“They might stumble at first, but The Plainsman staff will do a great job of covering this story.”

I said that with pride, knowing they might struggle a bit because they are, after all, students. But I know what they are capable of because I was a part of that staff once. And it has been a great paper for decades. And I was right. They did a great job covering the story. You can see their continuing coverage here.

If you are interested in how the sausage is made Dr. John Carvalho wrote a piece for The War Eagle Reader on the subject.

Covering that first big story is always hard, but they’ve done very well so far. I’m proud for them. Shame they had to have a story like this, but it shows their promise, demonstrates their hard work and will, hopefully, give them confidence to go with the sudden attention they are receiving.

(Update: WHNT-19, the Huntsville, Ala. CBS affiliate did a story on The Plainsman’s newsgathering. See it here.

There was another press conference today, though there was not much new to say. The suspect is still at large. Desmonte Leonard, authorities believe, was at the house they targeted last night. The thought is that he was able to move on before the Montgomery police, Auburn police, FBI, state troopers, U.S. Marshals and four other agencies arrived on the scene.

The only other news was that the reward for information leading to his arrest now sits at $30,000. And law enforcement is openly telling the public they’re tired of being misled. They’re offering Class C felonies to anyone who gets in the way.

I dislike that that this has become a football story. It is hard not to, though. Two former players were killed. One, Ladarious Phillips, was transferring to Jacksonville State (The heartbreaking version of his story is that his new coach, Jack Crowe, had expected him at JSU much early this summer. He was, apparently, having a tough time making that change, though, and so the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time motif has even greater significance. Phillips everybody loved. He was 290 pounds and could do a backflip flat-footed with a big smile. The stories people tell of him in his hometown of nearby Roanoke, Ala., about being a father figure to young children, even when he apparently didn’t have one around himself, are sad and uplifting and heartbreaking. The other, Ed Christian, retired because of a back injury. He was still a student, though, a Georgia boy who, by all accounts I’ve read, also had a fine reputation.

Another current player, Eric Mack, was injured, but is expected to make a complete recovery. Whether he’ll play football again, Auburn coach Gene Chizik said, is right now immaterial.

But there were others, too, not affiliated with the football program. DeMario Pitts was a local boy, and he is dead at 20, leaving behind a son and daughter. Xavier D. Moss was killed at 19. John Robertson is in critical condition at a Birmingham hospital. The 20-year-old was shot in the head.

This is clearly beyond the scope of a football program, or an athletic department or even a university.

But, still, Chizik stood before the media today. Still shaken, exhausted and determined, he stood before this sign and said he wasn’t thinking about football at all. He was thinking about his players, and those families:

I noticed that sign in the spring, when I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation of a much happier sort in that same meeting room. But that sign means something even more profound this week than when it is normally read by football players thinking of Xs and Os.

And so this is a football story, though it shouldn’t be. But maybe it had to be, because that’s one of the things we do best. So let’s make this a football story, and Chizik the reluctant healer.

While no coach wants this kind of added work in their job, I’m sure most would do quiet well in these terrible circumstances. But Gene Chizik will be great. I think he’s a pretty good coach, but I’ve long thought he was a better man.

Oh, and the other big news: The Advance layoff meetings start today. In Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile newspaper staffers are going into one-on-one meetings and being told whether they’ll have a future with the new company. Scary times for all those people.

I have friends in those newsrooms and have read the bylines or seen the efforts of others’ anonymous work for years, decades. No one wants to be a situation like this personally, but the future is here, says the company, and they’re changing for their future. Tough for everyone. Some 400 people are said to lose their jobs.

Later: Desmonte Leonard is in custody. He turned himself in to the U.S. Marshals in Montgomery this evening. Apparently he’d been negotiating with them for a good part of the day. Happily he’s been arrested without anyone else being hurt. And now the legal process can begin.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and I don’t want to overstate the point or anything, but we were at Mellow Mushroom when the news of his arrest was announced. You could fellow the atmosphere in the room change just a bit. Now, maybe, all of those families can begin to copy a tiny bit with their grief.