Coach's Corner

Last weekend, hidden from the intense media scrutiny normally associated with our better known brethren like the NFL owners, the Texas Golf Writers Association met for their tenth annual meeting, secreted away at the Las Colinas Golf Resort, in Irving, Texas. Now we all know I'm not really a golf writer, but if you've followed the arc of this space over the past half decade, you've witnessed a metamorphosis, from an anti-golfer snob (my first golf column was an excursion to a local golf school to poke scathing fun at the morons who play the game) to a semi-zealot.

I'm a new member. This was my first meeting. I was, to be honest, a little nervous. I was by myself. I didn't know anybody. As always, I felt awed and unworthy, being among what I, revealing just the tip of a puzzling pyramid of insecurities, think of as "real writers."

My worries were unfounded. I can honestly say, after walking or riding about with hundreds of total strangers for long, hot periods, people who I never saw before nor would ever seen again, I've never met a golfer I didn't like. Golfers are, at least out on the course, nice people. Supportive of good shots, discouraged by your shank. They'll happily risk a rattlesnake bite or poison ivy, trampling about in thorny, wild brush, helping find a stranger's errant ball.

And, so it was with the TGW. I was greeted by the president in the hale and hearty way of old friends. I met local links gods from the American-Statesman and Texas Monthly, and golf Internet king Jim Apfelbaum. Writers came from every corner of the state, representing a plethora of Gazettes, Dispatches, Posts, and Timeses. I got all kinds of free, neat stuff: tees, exotic, titanium golf balls I'd never buy, hats, metal green-fixer things, shirts, and I even won a swell, new sand wedge. I broke 100 on the difficult resort course. It was fun being an official golf writer.

Far, far from the toney links of Las Colinas are the half-crazy nut cases who inhabit talkradiodom, and the paid professionals, with some level of expertise, both print and electronic, who egg them on. These are the dangerous carriers of the "whatthefuck syndrome." As in, "Whatthefuck is he talking about!?"

The case of Reggie Freeman is the latest documented occurrence of this problem. Freeman was the best basketball player in Texas history. Without Reggie, UT would have been hard pressed to score 50 points. Reggie was considered a certain, high draft pick. Instead, Reggie wasn't drafted at all. The body of the Austin sportsfan was, at this moment, wide open to a nasty infection of the whatthefuck virus.

I thought Reggie was great. Bill Schoening thought Reggie was great. Reggie's coach thought Reggie was great. Reggie thought Reggie was great. So sad, nobody cares what we think. The only opinion on the abilities of Reggie which matter are those of the 27 basketball professionals, who are paid to make cold, impersonal decisions about Reggie's talent. Instead of accepting the simple, quite clear reality -- that these experts did not believe Freeman was fast enough, tall enough, strong enough, a good enough shooter, or passer, or ball handler, or thinker, to play in the NBA -- we instead concocted elaborate, convoluted, most bizarre scenarios on how we could be so wrong.

These centered on the same general scheme. Somehow, this was all the fault of Tom Penders and his now, for some reason or another, suddenly maligned "system." The "thinking" is that, since one-time UT guards Joey Wright, Travis Mays, Lance Blanks, Terrence Rencher, and B.J. Tyler all flopped in the NBA, pro scouts are now wary of this clearly dangerous Penders scheme, which produces unsuccessful professional players.

Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle, have you people all lost your minds? This is so fantastically stupid, it embarrasses me to see this absurd proposition repeated and accepted as fact. First of all, with the exception of Mays, whose promising pro career was cut short by injuries, every Texas player drafted was done so with low expectations. These were not highly recruited high school players; each of them blossomed under Penders and was lucky to have even an outside shot in the NBA. They, like the vast majority of late picks, didn't make it. So what?

Now, let's take a fantastic leap into goofy-goofy land and assume there's something, anything, to this ridiculous theory. The NBA drafts guys from everywhere and anywhere, guys from community colleges, guys from Turkey, guys from high schools, mates from Australia and privates in the Army. If they think you can play, you'll be drafted. A system is totally irrelevant. Can you shoot? Can you dribble? Can you rebound? Simple questions. Simple skills. Players in Dean Smith's system do these things. So do players on the Croat team. Penders' players do 'em too.

Apparently, Reggie does not do them well enough. That's the reality of Reggie's world. I hope he doesn't listen to all this other silly drivel, which would only create an excuse for him to fail. Reggie needs to find out why the NBA really didn't draft him, then work his ass off to prove them wrong.

I, for one, think the NBA pros made a mistake. But only Freeman himself can prove that correct.