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Tuesday Morning Quarterback readers continue to submit examples of good sportsmanship. Peter Giovannini of Morrilton, Ark., wrote, "Recently I saw something I had never seen before in a decade of officiating high school football. Earle High School of Arkansas played Palestine-Wheatley High. Earle was undefeated and P-W had not managed to win a game. Earle scored on its first two possessions and promptly pulled the starters -- with six minutes to go in the first quarter! In the fourth quarter, with the outcome decided and Earle having arrived at the P-W the 5-yard line, Earle's coaches replaced the third string tailback with a young man who obviously was a disadvantaged child. The quarterback took the snap, turned and handed the ball to the boy. No P-W player made a serious effort to tackle him -- obviously the coaches on both sides had talked before the game. Touchdown! This touchdown was set up by an interception by the Earle defense which could easily have been returned for a touchdown. Instead the intercepting player deliberately stepped out of bounds at the 5. Somewhere, I think the football gods are smiling."
Aaron Kleinman writes, "Like most I-A schools, the University of Connecticut schedules I-AA opponents. However, UConn recently moved up from I-AA to I-A and coach Randy Edsall knows what it's like to be shellacked by a I-A powerhouse. So when Connecticut played I-AA Rhode Island and led 31-7 at the half Edsall brought in the second string and only called a few passes in the third quarter. In the fourth, up 38-7, he brought in the third string and didn't pass. UConn ended up winning 52-7, but that score didn't show that UConn went out of its way to show URI respect." Later the football gods rewarded Connecticut with a respectable showing against undefeated Rutgers.
Tim Dube of California noted that Air Force, ahead 43-0 at intermission against Army, basically made no attempt to score in the second half of a game that concluded 43-7. He writes, "I guess it's to be expected that service academy teams would be sportsmanlike." Tim, sportsmanship is always to be expected, though far too seldom actually observed. Note that the following week, the football gods rewarded Air Force with a creditable showing against Notre Dame. Scott McAuliffe of Atlanta notes, "Mark Richt, despite pressure over Georgia's disappointing season, showed healthy sportsmanlike spirit by kneeling on the ball at the Auburn 10-yard line with just under two minutes left and up by 17 points, rather than try to score again for a spectacular victory margin over the favorite. Getting possession back, Tommy Tuberville acknowledged this gesture and simply ran out the clock."
On the flip side, many in the media, including TMQ, lamented this autumn's stunt in which Matewan High School of West Virginia used a no-huddle offense throughout the second half to run up the score to 64-0 and claim a bogus "record" for a player. Even worse, this was done against an undermanned winless team that would finish the season 0-10. I hesitate to say more, since this incident does, after all, merely involve one small-town high school with an obnoxious coach. But the conclusion to the story, noted by Brian Schwartz of Santa Clara, Calif., is an object lesson. Until the night it relentlessly humiliated a weak opponent, Matewan High was undefeated and a ranked team in West Virginia. For the remainder of the season, Matewan went 1-3, failing to make the playoffs.
Bad sportsmanship always comes back to haunt you. The football gods note our choices. Deliberately humiliating an opponent is bully behavior, which leads to psychological weakness; bullies always fold when confronted by strength. Run up the score one week, lose the following week -- this is a recurrent pattern. For instance as noted by Salah Salem of Fairfax, Va., New England kept its starters on the field, and Tom Brady kept throwing passes, despite a 31-7 fourth-quarter lead at Minnesota. Since then, New England has lost two straight. Or run up the score one year, lose the next. Will Messer of Lexington, Ky. writes, "You saw Rutgers' stunning upset of the University of Louisville on Thursday, but I'd wager you missed last season's matchup. Louisville took a 49-5 lead into the fourth quarter and had the game totally in hand. Louisville coach Bobby Petrino kept in his first-string quarterback, Brian Brohm, and the Cardinals embarked on a 12-play scoring drive. Seven of the 12 plays were passing plays. The football gods avenged this showing of disrespect when they aided the monster Rutgers victory in the rematch."
Matt Drew of Boulder, Colo., reports, "In the first half of the Broncos at Raiders game, the alluring Raiderettes were showing their professionalism with miniskirts and tank tops, and Jake Plummer threw two interceptions while the Raiders racked up a 13-7 lead. Imagine my relief when the second half started and the Raiderettes had donned windbreakers! I knew immediately the Broncos would win. Indeed the Raiders were shut out in the second half: punt, missed FG, punt, punt, punt, fumble, fumble." Tom Howell of Edison, N.J. notes the same potent force was at play in the Rutgers-Louisville game. "I was in the front row of the closed end zone at Rutgers Stadium, watching my beloved alma mater trailing favored Louisville. Our cheerleaders were in windbreakers throughout the first half. Just before the start of the third quarter, though temperatures were falling, they returned in bare-midriff glory. I declared to all those around me, 'The football gods are appeased and shall reward this courage!' And they did."
This week TMQ speculated that Bill Belichick has deliberately kept Gillette Stadium's field in poor condition to slow down the visiting team, but Sunday was hoist on his own petard when the rainstorm caused Tom Brady to fall repeatedly, a big factor in the Jets' win. Many readers, including Mary Yoffee of Natick, Mass., noted that Tuesday the Patriots began bulldozing their field in order to install FieldTurf, the new cross between synthetic and grass. "Playing conditions at Gillette Stadium have long been the cause of much consternation," New England's own announcement states.
I noted that while the Giants' multimillion-dollar coaching brain trust seemed unaware that a field-goal attempt can be run back, the Bears had both a returner on the field and a return play called. Jim Panici of Burlington, Mass., notes a Chicago Tribune story laying out that the Bears' return was sophisticated: "The call was not 'return right' but 'bench alert,' meaning Bears blockers set up the wall toward the Bears' sideline as the opponent's field-goal kicking team figured to be walking towards their own sideline as the kick falls short." And walking off the field is exactly what the Giants were beginning to do as Devin Hester rocketed out of his end zone on the way to a 108-yard touchdown.
On the NFL's annoying insistence on forcing viewers to watch bad games involving nearby teams when great games are playing at the same time, Sandra Ottensmann of Palo Alto, Calif., writes that it's even worse in San Francisco and Oakland than you might think. Because the cities are designated home markets for each other, "Often the Niners and Raiders are the only games we get to see at all! Next week, for example, the schedule is Oakland for the early game and San Francisco for the late game with no third game shown. Here, note the entire country gets to see Cowboys at Colts except for the Bay Area and Arizona! I'm glad my Colts keep winning, but it would be great if I could actually see them." Chuck Cottle of Taftville, Conn., adds, "Living in Connecticut I missed out on the national Saints versus Steelers broadcast and was subjected to Cowboys at Cardinals. It's the second time this year I was subjected to a crappy Cowboys game when a better, national game was being played. Any idea how Connecticut became a secondary market for Dallas? I never thought I'd say this but 'Save me United States Congress!'" Chuck, your dog must have barked when Cowboys at Cardinals came on the screen. Chances are some programmer decided you are a Giants fan and therefore fascinated, just fascinated, by NFC East teams. Yet another reason Congress should break the Sunday Ticket monopoly and let viewers choose for themselves what to watch. Consumer choice is the trend across the entire global economy. Why isn't it the trend for NFL television?
NASA says that Thursday it will announce proof that "dark energy has been an ever-present constituent of space for most of the universe's history." Only for "most" of the universe's history? So NASA claims it has finally located 96 percent of the universe, but also thinks that once only four percent was present and the other 96 percent didn't exist? Needless to say, TMQ awaits the details.
Regarding TMQ's item on the babes of Norwegian curling, Jake Widman of San Francisco notes, "Obviously you weren't paying attention during the recent Winter Olympics, or you couldn't have overlooked Russia's Ludmila Privikovka, No. 2 in the slide show of female curlers at the bottom of this page." Ken Olson of Carlsbad, Calif., writes, "I think the reason 'Friday Night Lights' is having problems keeping an audience is precisely that the show is so impressively realistic. Most people feel that living through high school once was more than enough. The last thing most people want is to relive memories of jerk jocks, IQ-challenged cheerleaders, cliques, immaturity, etc. There is a reason adults use the phrase 'high school' as a pejorative when describing someone's mentality or the environment of their work office."
Srivatsa Narasimha of Bangalore, India, asks, ""Have you noticed how every football player proudly says his college when introducing himself in the opening sequence of an NFL game? But many dropped out as soon as their eligibility expired. Television announcers, team press guides and so on also give the colleges of NFL players regardless of whether they actually graduated. I certainly could not claim, on my professional resumé, to be a graduate of a university if I had not actually earned the degree. How come NFL players get to claim to be alumni of schools they never graduated from? My proposal: NFL press guides, television broadcasts and the NFL.com player directory should list only the highest school from which the player actually graduated. This would be an eye-opener, I think."
Finally, two haiku. One reader proposes that the reason so many coaches keep starters in long after gaining an insurmountable lead is because they've drafted their own players in fantasy leagues, and want to run up their stats. Another reader laments the difficulty of getting one's work done on Tuesdays during football season:
Starters keep playing
Fantasy football?
-- Rick Roach, Rockledge, Fla.
Each Tuesday morning
productivity drops to
nil. Thanks TMQ!
-- Scott Anderson Lakewood, Colo.
In addition to writing Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" and other books. He is also a contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Sound off to Page 2 here.
