Coach's Corner

For pure vapidity, only the seven days leading up to the Super Bowl rivals the slumberous sports writing between Christmas and New Year's. Even the best newspapers and their top writers feel compelled to write ("to write" is too dynamic a verb) year-end best-and-worst type swill. Some of my least inspired efforts come when I know I'll be away, sitting on a beach next week and don't want to waste a day working on a column when I could be swaying on a hammock. So I'm compelled to come up with something generic before I leave for better places. This must be the reason behind the universal use of the year-in-review column. Ever the rebel, I rarely leave town during this time, a two-week period that amounts to a free ride in a time machine back to Austin circa 1979: Traffic disappears. Rush hour becomes, for a few fine days, nonexistent ... but then there are those dull sports pages. This year's grossest excess is lazy (but politically correct) pabulum about how the world of sport was forever changed -- "trivialized" is the adjective du jour -- by the terror of September. It's as if the best, most creative minds in sports journalism all, for one week, not only resort to deadly clichés but the exact same clichés and what's worse, clichés that are untrue, a complete contradiction in terms. I defy any one to watch a football game or a Pacers-Bucks game and point out a single moment or inflection in tone that sets it apart from a game a year ago. The game looks, feels, and sounds the same to me. It barks. It quacks. He shoots. He scores! Am I an insensitive lout for not feeling, seeing, and hearing what appears so obvious to my more well-known colleagues?

Is it wrong to acknowledge that we've adjusted to a new kind of normalcy? Isn't this need to acquire a readjusted normalcy a uniquely human trait? To the supporting argument that sports are so insipid compared with the pain and horror of "real life" excuse me while I only roll my eyes. Not at the trivial Giants-Eagles game but the trivial writing. The entire point of sports is to escape to a make-believe world that means nothing in the big picture but can mean everything for a few hours. Sports are trivial! Wow, there's a Platonistic concept. I guess this late-igniting light bulb explains why I'm not writing for The New York Times.

In any case (and in any year) year-end stories will still be written. They bore me because sports are singly a living in the present and divining a future endeavor. A common sports cliché is "What have you done for me today?" A cliché becomes a cliché because they're true ... most of them anyway. What happened yesterday on the court, field, or rink is the most irrelevant of news. I forgot who the Ravens played in last year's Super Bowl.

I also can't tell you the team Duke beat for the NCAA basketball title. Six months from now I'll have to think about who won the World Series. I've already forgotten who played in the LCS games. I remember that the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, but who they played is gone from my memory bank, even though I watched all seven games. The point is sports are about today and tomorrow, not about yesterday.

In keeping with this progressive, futuristic theme, here are some glimpses into our trivial sports future. Nebraska will beat Miami in the Rose Bowl. Then the media, in a spiteful effort to further their own agenda's (that the rest of the world demands a playoff ... which it doesn't) will vote Oregon as co-champ. Lord, the arrogance of these people kills me ... Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause must have some powerful cross-dressing blackmail over the head of owner Jerry Reinsdorf to still have his job. Nevertheless, Krause just stumbled into an outstanding hire as coach for the team he's destroyed, Bill Cartwright. Cartwright, a soft spoken, articulate ex-player, is the kind of hard-working old pro, like Phil Jackson, other players will listen to: the opposite of the rah-rah college guys like Tim Floyd who always fail in the NBA... Next year, with road games at North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas State, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma in Dallas, strength-of-schedule will not be an issue for the Texas Longhorns. The '03 conference schedule will see home games against these same teams. Longhorn fans will get an honest measure of their team, one even I'll respect. Chris Simms will continue to be brilliant and terrible, often within the same four downs. Three losses, no matter how spiteful writers want to be, won't win a National Championship... Baseball won't be allowed to run their business as they choose because conservative, keep-government-out-of-peoples-lives Republican politicians (the most outrageous of political hypocrites) will block baseball owners' desire to eliminate a few rotten franchises. Anyway, it won't really matter because the season will be torpedoed by another labor crisis. This year's Super Bowl will feature the Rams and the Steelers. Next year at this time I won't remember the loser ... that will be the Rams.

Have a happy and healthy New Year ... and thanks for reading my column.