Coach's Corner
By Andy "Coach" Cotton, Fri., Oct. 11, 1996
In the old days, there were lots of things guys could do by themselves. Guys didn't know girls even wanted to play sports. At New Trier, they had a field hockey team; the girls wore sexy green skirts and knee socks. I liked that. Women boxers? Please! Remember the smoky pictures of old-time prizefights? There's nothing wrong with the film, it's guys smoking cheap White Owl cigars. Women didn't go to fights and they didn't smoke cigars, either. More on that later.
Guys could go to the club, play golf (women didn't play golf) and sit around the clubhouse naked, smoking cigars, and playing bridge. We can still do that, but the ladies have their own separate-but-equal clubhouse. I could go on, but I don't want my female readers to get the wrong impression. I'm not mad, not even resentful. I'm properly cowed and resigned to the times.
Last weekend, I was put in charge of purchasing cigars for a fancy dinner soirée my company has. I'm standing in the tiny, claustrophobic humidor at Wiggy's Liquor store, being jostled by a cadre of aggressive young attorneys, a nice box of Arturo Fuenteses in one hand. I'm trying to find exactly the right cigars for "the girls." At least that's what my Sensitive New Age Partner (SNAP) had told me minutes before. "Don't forget," he meowed, "the girls."
Which cigars, I wonder. The thin ones? The fat ones? Don't they have any cheap ones, I mumble to myself; then, a moment of epiphany. An alpha moment, if you will. "Screw the girls," I decide, striding Norman Mailer-like from the humidor. "Let 'em smoke cigarettes." Proud of this moment of maleness, I needed to share. I whispered the tale to the check-out guy, though I had to tell it twice because my hushed delivery (I was afraid of the check-out girl and the large feminist nearby) was inaudible.
Pleased, I called the SNAP. For the third time I retold the narrative of the Wiggy's epiphany, complete with dangerously embellished descriptions of shouting this moment of male liberation in the face of three k.d. lang-type check-out persons. He was, I could tell from the long, silent pause, appalled. "Does Patty (our feminist office manager) know about this?" he asked in a quaking voice.
The next morning he informed me I'd damn well better rethink my position because Patty now knew -- guess who blabbed? -- and she wasn't amused. Humbly, I went back to buy cigars for the girls. Mercifully, it was the check-out guy's day off.
Odds 'n ends: Let's put some perspective on the Rangers' first post-season appearance. Texas was first in a four-team division. Big deal. As a Cub fan, I speak from painful experience in saying losing a divisional playoff -- no matter the length of your team's exile -- doesn't mean jack. The Cubs have played in the post-season only twice since 1945. In '84, they held a 2-0 lead over the Padres in a five-game series. Within days -- it seemed like seconds -- they became the first team to ever lose three straight. A similar, though less apocalyptic, scene was replayed against San Francisco in '89. Believe me, the first flush of happiness was soon replaced by familiar feelings of humiliation. Until your team can, at least, claim a league pennant, they remain pathetic losers. Sorry.
A most unlikely Cowboy role model has emerged from the team where early morning drunken incidents are as commonplace as house fleas, a team where another wrecked Mercedes is an inconvenience on par with running out of milk, and into this unhealthy climate steps one Deion Sanders, staunch supporter of Life, Liberty, and the American way. A Dole Republican.
Deion decided to set an example, demonstrating to his wayward teammates how to get into some red-blooded, boys-will-be-boys trouble even Rush Limbaugh would have a hard time getting worked up over. Last week in Fort Myers, Florida, Sanders opted not to fight trespassing charges for "bass fishing on a restricted lake." The felonious fisherman was fined $250, plus court costs. A contrite Sanders (a two-time bass offender) offered, "I knew I was breaking the law," when he lost his head and fired up the bass boat last June.
Another example of the Pavlovian conditioning of the Cowboy fan: On the morning of the Eagle/Dallas game, Kirk Bohls dolefully headlined his column "Cowboys would be best off by not playing tonight." The next morning, after the Dallas victory, a giddy Bohls (who's seen thousands of football games. A man with some perspective!) histrionically lauded the Eagles as "...one of the NFL's elite teams." Elite teams! A team with one offensive player, Rickey Watters. A team run by a third-string quarterback, Rodney Peete. A team the Cowboys beat with Ty Detmer -- the worst looking professional QB I've ever seen -- filling in for the injured Pete. An "elite team?" As I've said, Cowboy fans are made, not born.
