Category Archives: Sports

Should college athletes get paid (more than the generous compensation they already receive, that is)?

If the ancient Greeks had allowed their athletes to be paid, maybe they could have afforded some clothes.

One or two of y’all really appreciated Bryan raising sports topics in my absence, so here goes: Should college athletes get paid?

Here’s the summary section of the bill that would provide for that:

A BILL TO AMEND CHAPTER 101, TITLE 59 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO COLLEGES AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING GENERALLY, BY ADDING ARTICLE 5, TO PROVIDE THAT PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS IN THIS STATE SHALL ANNUALLY AWARD STIPENDS TO STUDENT ATHLETES WHO PARTICIPATE IN AN INTERCOLLEGIATE SPORT AND MAINTAIN A GOOD ACADEMIC STANDING DURING THE PREVIOUS YEAR, TO PROVIDE CONDITIONS FOR RECEIPT OF STIPENDS, AND TO DEFINE NECESSARY TERMS; TO AMEND CHAPTER 101, TITLE 59 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO COLLEGES AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING GENERALLY, BY ADDING ARTICLE 6, TO PROVIDE THAT PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS IN THIS STATE SHALL CREATE A STUDENT ATHLETE TRUST FUND AND FUND THE TRUST WITH A PERCENTAGE OF THE INTERCOLLEGIATE SPORT GROSS REVENUE GENERATED FROM CERTAIN SOURCES, TO PROVIDE THAT FOR EACH YEAR A STUDENT ATHLETE MAINTAINS GOOD ACADEMIC STANDING, FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS WILL BE DEPOSITED INTO THE FUND ON HIS BEHALF AND THE TOTAL TRUST FUND AMOUNT MAY NOT EXCEED TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER STUDENT ATHLETE; TO PROVIDE THAT AFTER FULFILLMENT OF ALL ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATION AND COMPLETION OF A STATE-APPROVED FINANCIAL LITERACY COURSE, THE PARTICIPATING INSTITUTION SHALL PROVIDE A ONE-TIME PAYMENT TO EACH STUDENT ATHLETE IN THE FULL AMOUNT DEPOSITED IN THE FUND ON THEIR BEHALF, TO PROVIDE CONDITIONS FOR RECEIPT OF THE TRUST FUND PAYMENT, AND TO DEFINE NECESSARY TERMS.

I say no. And when you say that college athletes are providing services worth millions to their schools, and that (even though those on scholarship are provided with a free college education if they are willing and able to take advantage of it) they can easily be exploited, chewed up and spit out by such a system…

Then I say we need to change the system, not the status of the athletes. Step it back from being a big business. Move it back toward something more akin to intramural sports among actual students.

Of course, I know I’m speaking wishfully. This situation arises from a sort of mass psychosis in the general population, a society that for reasons that continue to baffle me places an absurdly high value on the outcomes of games. Actually, not only the outcomes, but on every bit of minutia in any way connected to these games.

And that’s the problem. I admit I don’t know how to change that. But I don’t think paying players is a solution to the problem. Seems to me it would take us even deeper in…

A somewhat belated Top Ten Super Bowl ads list

4 Replies

I mentioned earlier in the week that I was working, off-and-on, on an item for the ADCO blog about best Super Bowl ads of 2015.

Well, it took me until Friday, because not only did I have a lot of much-higher-priority client work to do, but just to do this one thing meant finding time to track down and watch 54 TV adverts.

Yes, 54 of them. And I’m still not sure that I saw them all.

Anyway, here’s what I posted. Wherever it says “we,” substitute “I,” because these are all actually my opinions. As you can probably tell. Of course, I have extensive experience with the ~~royal~~, I mean editorial, “we”…

After extensive research, we are ready to release our list of favorite ads from Super Bowl XLIX. (That is to say, the one that was played on Feb. 1, 2015, for those of you who don’t want to have to interpret Roman numerals and then add the number onto 1966 to figure out which one we’re talking about.)

This of course is an entirely subjective list, and you’ll have your own favorites, but hey — a list like this is just meant to be a conversation-starter, not a Final Judgment From On High.

Here are our top 10 — out of the 54 we saw:

Esurance “Say My Name” — For a brief, shining moment, Walter White was back among us. And he hadn’t changed a bit. “You’ll thank me later.”
Fiat “Blue Pill” — OK, so it’s a bit off-color. But it was funny, and we liked it. There weren’t enough this year that fit that description.
Dove “Men+Care” — We forced ourselves to choose just one of the three ads that promoted positive images of fathers. We picked this one because all those kids calling “Daddy” really got to us.
Turbo Tax “Boston Tea Party” — Surely there was a more peaceful way to settle this dispute over taxes. Or maybe not. All right, then…
Carnival “Return to the Sea” — So, it’s kind of cheating to play on our emotions with an inspiring voiceover from JFK. But it worked. Especially with that reverb.
Snickers “The Brady Bunch” — Because Steve Buscemi, that’s why!
Supercell “Clash of Clans” — Just Liam Neeson doing what he does, but he does it so well.
BMW “Newfangled Idea” — We expect a sequel in which Katie shows us that she can twerk, too.
Bud Light “Real Life PacMan” — OK, so we’re prejudiced on this one, but we really did think it was good.
Budweiser “Lost Dog” — Yes, this was the annual obligatory cute-puppy ad, which really doesn’t have a lot to do with making beer, but we were torn between this and the other fairly-good Bud ad, and chose this one. We also liked the slow cover version of the Proclaimers song.

Ground broken on Bull Street ballpark

14 Replies

This just in from those promoting the Bull Street development:

“Today we break ground; In April of 2016, we’ll play ball!”

This morning, Columbia came together to ceremoniously break ground on Spirit Communications Park. The park will be a state-of-the-art multi-use sports and entertainment venue home to an affiliated Minor League Baseball team in April, 2016.

“This is a milestone day for our entire city,” Mayor Benjamin said. “It’s taken hard work by many to make this possible, and more hard work is still in store, but our vision for a more vibrant Columbia is coming closer and closer to fruition. The countdown is now on to Opening Day in 2016.”

“It’s exciting to think about how Spirit Communications Park will add to what is already one of America’s great cities,” said Freier, who was at a similar groundbreaking for Parkview Field in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 2007. Parkview Field has since been named the “No. 1 Ballpark Experience” in Minor League Baseball in three of the past four years.

Spirit Communications Park will anchor development at Columbia Common, the new gateway to Downtown Columbia. The 181-acre Columbia Common, under the guidance of master developer Hughes Development, is primed to become the ultimate live-work-play community in the region.

“We’ve seen this kind of development centered around a ballpark work throughout the country, including not so far away from Columbia,” said Bob Hughes, who led a similar project a decade ago around Fluor Field in Greenville. “Folks in Columbia are in for a treat with Spirit Communications Park.”

We can expect more than 900 jobs to be created during the construction of the ballpark. Once complete, Columbia’s professional baseball team will bring on approximately 35 full-time and 550 part-time employees.

This park would not be possible with out support from people like you; people who gave their time and energy to support Building Bull Street. Let’s play ball!

I’d hate to see this guy trip and hurt himself

18 Replies

And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I can think of.
– Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Yeah, I know I used that same quote just a month or two ago, but it’s one of my all-time favorites.

And it’s perfect for a post in which, having ranted about one of my chief peeves just moments ago, I let loose on another one.

Look at the photo above, from the Washington Post iPad app. (Here’s the story it goes with.) See anything wrong with it?

Yeah, it’s a good action photo, the player seeming to float in the air as he runs the bases.

But I can’t enjoy it because I can’t stop thinking, When he lands, he’s liable to trip on his pants.

Yeah, I know — ballplayers have been wearing their pants like this for a long time. Rather than wear proper knicker-length pants, with the team-color stirrup showing over their socks, their pants legs go all the way to the tops of their shoes, and too often, beyond.

And it just looks stupid. Almost as stupid as wearing a ballcap with the brim artificially flat as a mathematical plane, instead of curled like a hyperbola, the way God and Abner Doubleday intended. It’s so unbelievably uncool. Like some clueless alien trying to dress like a ballplayer to pass as an earthling, and failing miserably. Players who do that look like dorks. It makes them look, well, like this. It makes me wonder, What are these people’s heads shaped like? (And yeah, I know it comes from hip-hop culture, but I don’t care — it’s definitively uncool.)

But there’s something especially awful about this particular photo, something that justifies my bringing this up again: That’s Bryce Harper, No. 34 for the Washington Nationals. Bryce Harper is known for being one of the few present-day ballplayers who still wears knickers and stirrups!

So this is a particular betrayal of tradition, and all that is right and true about the game.

Maybe it’s temporary, maybe it’s some playoff superstition thing; I don’t know. But I’m deeply disappointed. I mean, this was supposed to be a guy who gets it….

I know it won’t do any good, but I had to say something. Again. I just hate to see it.

Now, all of you kids — get offa my infield!

These guys got it.

Benjamin seeks help naming baseball team

28 Replies

This release just came in from Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin’s office:

It’s Time to Name Our Team

New Professional Baseball Team in Columbia Needs Help of Fans.

A new chapter of baseball in Columbia will begin on Opening Night in April, 2016. For the first time in more than a decade, professional baseball will be played in Columbia and in a spectacular new venue that will anchor the redevelopment of Columbia Common, the former State Mental Health Campus on Bull Street.

Before the future stars of Major League baseball can lace up their spikes and take the field, they need a name. A name that speaks to, from and about our City with pride. Columbia’s team needs an identity that is uniquely Columbia, and we’re counting on the community to help us identify the moniker that will resonate throughout the Midlands.

Suggestions for the name of our new professional baseball team are now being accepted online at ColumbiaProBall.com. Fans are invited to suggest a name, along with a short explanation of their suggestion, from now until October 15th.

In the coming weeks, representatives of the team will spend time in Columbia conducting research, interviews, focus groups and discussions to help them better understand the community and select the new name. Once the “Name Our Team” process concludes, team ownership and staff will synthesize the information and suggestions to develop an identity for Columbia’s team.

The winning name, along with the team’s logo and colors, will be unveiled in the Spring of 2015. The fan whose submission leads to the team’s new name will have the honor of throwing out a ceremonial first pitch on the Opening Night of the ballpark. That fan will also receive a prize package that will include an official team cap and jersey and tickets to Opening Night. (If more than one fan submits the winning name, one of those fans will be chosen at random.)

“The team and venue will be great additions that will provide great entertainment and enhance the quality of life for residents of the Midlands,” said Jason Freier, Chairman and CEO of Hardball Capital and managing owner of the team. “We are excited to begin the process of crafting an identity that is uniquely Columbia and that fans and the community at large can be proud of and call their own.”

Fans are also invited to join the conversation regarding what to name Columbia’s new team on social media. Be sure to “like” Columbia Professional Baseball on Facebook and follow @ColumbiaProBall on Twitter. Use #NameOurTeam to share your ideas. Note that all official Name Our Team entries must be submitted online atcolumbiaproball.com.

“Through this process, we will come to better understand what makes Columbia so special and unique,” said Abby Naas, the team’s Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations, who will be moving to Columbia from Hardball Capital’s highly successful team in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “We know from our experience re-branding our team in Fort Wayne that this can really be an opportunity to build an identity that the community can rally around. The TinCaps brand is beloved in Fort Wayne and recognized nationally as one of the great monikers in Minor League Baseball. We will work hard to achieve the same results in Columbia.”

For more information on the team and venue, and to enter your submission for the #NameOurTeam Contest, visit ColumbiaProBall.com.

I imagine that the mayor is likely to get a few names he’d rather not hear, given the raw tempers that were aired as the new ballpark was being debated.

But in case y’all have some serious suggestions, I thought I’d give you a heads-up.

This is it! The only ‘Game Day’ post you’ll get from me…

15 Replies

I was pleased, in skimming through my Washington Post app this morning, to run across this profile of Steve Spurrier, to which the Post gave prominent play. Pleased not because I wanted to read about the coach, but because it was written by Kent Babb, one of the finest sportswriters to pass through The State‘s newsroom during my years at the paper.

It begins:

By Kent Babb August 27

COLUMBIA, S.C. — College football’s biggest troll, to use the parlance of our times, is 69 years old and doesn’t have a Twitter account, which is probably for the best. He likes to play golf in his downtime and, if it’s hot enough outside, will take off his shirt in public and stand barefoot on the grass under a floppy hat.

He is from east Tennessee, likes cheap beer and NASCAR, but maybe the only thing he enjoys more than football is sharing his opinions on football — its coaches, its issues, its current and future welfare. He thinks college players should be paid, and, well, here he comes, sitting in front of a microphone in a meeting room at Williams-Brice Stadium.

“The media boys picked us to win the East,” South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier said of reporters’ Southeastern Conference predictions, and what the so-called “media boys” think — including that, before Thursday night’s opening game against Texas A&M, the Gamecocks are the nation’s ninth-best team — is meaningless but worth mentioning. Everything, to Spurrier, is worth mentioning. A good team gets Spurrier excited, and that means he talks more, trains his sights tighter on his preferred targets…

You should read on. I’m sure it’s good. Anyway, I Tweeted to Kent that it was great to have him back in town, and he responded:

@BradWarthen Still feels like home, Brad. Thank God Uncle Louie’s and the Oyster Bar will never close.

— Kent Babb (@kentbabb) August 28, 2014

Football-related festivities actually got rolling yesterday afternoon, near as I could tell. I had an afternoon meeting in the Vista with folks from Palmetto Health Foundation about Walk For Life (more on that very soon), and the “entertainment district,” as it is called these days, was crawling with Aggies already.

And already, traffic tempers were frayed. As I walked from Pearlz up to the Capital City Club, there was something of a jam at Assembly and Gervais. One guy in a gargantuan pickup truck with no fewer than four Gamecock flags flapping from the roof was in the left-turn lane, southbound on Assembly, and incessantly honking at the poor woman in a sedan in front of him. She had nowhere to go, because the Gervais traffic to her left was backed up into the intersection, and still the folks northbound on Assembly were trying to flow into it.

But this bundle of hostility just kept honking, until the woman pulled over toward where she wanted to go and waited with her rear end out in the intersection. And the truck guy pulled up a few feet and sat there right where the woman had sat, of course, because there never had been anywhere for him to go.

What gets into these people? Steroids? What?

Anyway, I rode up to the club for our monthly chairman’s reception, and on the elevator with me was a little girl in a Gamecock cheerleader costume, holding a stuffed animal (a snow leopard, I think). Then I remembered — Cocky was coming to the reception. A good time was had by all, even those of us who are less than enthusiastic about the hoopla.

Early this afternoon, I found myself in Shandon, and on my way back to the office, I kept passing people who were loading up their cars, like evacuees. I kept thinking, better them than me.

Although, you know who I’m really feeling bad for today? A couple of days ago I got an email promotion from Rosewood Market & Deli, the locally-grown natural food store hanging on within the orbit of Earth Fare and Whole Foods, announcing the following:

Sidewalk Farmers’ Market

Thursday Aug 28
4-7pm

at Rosewood Market

I’m kind of thinking that’s going to run into some traffic problems. Hope I’m wrong.

Speaking of which, I’m going to pack up my laptop and get out of the downtown area.

One of my daughters is there tailgating with friends now. I hope she’s drinking plenty of water. She said she would…

Anton Gunn announces, with fanfare, his return to SC

14 Replies

Ran across this on Facebook today:

Long before anyone ever thought I would end up in Washington, DC working for The President of the United States, or helping to lead the implementation of healthcare reform, I was that big guy from South Carolina. South Carolina is where I decided to go to college in 1991. It’s where I played football. It’s where I met my wife. It’s where I became a man. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. Even though, I was born and raised in Virginia, I actually feel like I’m a native son of South Carolina. I have done community work and professional work in nearly every single county of South Carolina. I have built great relationships with people all over the state. Their love, commitment and passion about the goodness and potential of the state can be overwhelming. I share this overwhelming love, commitment and passion for South Carolina. It also it drives me. I have spent nearly two decades focused on doing my part to make South Carolina better. I have worked on health care issues, early childhood education, predatory lending, tax policy, small business issues, economic development and social service issues. I have done this as a community organizer, policy advocate, trainer, non-profit executive and small business owner. I also served in the South Carolina Legislature and did my best to be a positive force for change in the state.

Four years ago this week, I was asked to leave South Carolina to serve our country by working at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, I took this obligation seriously. I come from a long legacy of family members who were drafted or signed up to serve our country in some way. So I took this obligation seriously and I wanted to do my part (from a national position) to help South Carolina. I am proud of my time in federal service because I believe that I was able to have an impact in South Carolina. I got the chance to work with lots of great people while in the regional office in Atlanta and when I worked in Washington, DC. It felt good to be of help to South Carolina but I really missed working IN South Carolina.

Now, four years after I moved away, I am excited to announce that I will be coming back to South Carolina after I complete my Resident Fellowship at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. I will come back to South Carolina and do what I am most passionate about…health care. Specifically, I will continue doing my part to improve health outcomes for all people in the state. I firmly believe that good health and good healthcare are essential to being successful in life. If you are not healthy in your mind, body or your spirit how is it possible to achieve your God given potential in life? I truly don’t believe you can. I am sure you have seen how a deprived and unhealthy state of existence can impede the success of a person, organization or community. However, if we understand, engage and master our health and healthcare system, we can unleash the unconquerable power of the human spirit in all of us and impact our state. We become a stronger community when we all are healthier. We become a better community when we embrace diversity as a strength and use it make our futures brighter, together. It is with good health and good diversity that we can achieve all of our goals and dreams in South Carolina.

Those that know me should know that I have a sense of humor and a love for sports. I thought it would be pretty funny to use a morphed photo of my favorite basketball player’s (sarcasm) way of announcing that he was going back to his home state, as an image for my reasons of returning to South Carolina. So if you don’t like my LeBron James morph, please just take it for face value, a joke. But in all seriousness, LeBron’s reasons for going back to Cleveland are very similar to my reasons for coming back to South Carolina. I love the state. I love the people. I want to raise my daughter there and I want to use all of my skills, experiences and will power to add value to South Carolina. I think South Carolina is stronger when we get everyone who lives outside of South Carolina, but are from South Carolina or have a passion for South Carolina to move back and help make the state better for all of ours future.

So I am coming home and I am so excited to be coming back. See you all in January 2015.

P.S. I am moving to Charleston, SC…news story to follow shortly!

Far as I’m concerned, SC should be grateful to get him back. He was a very positive force in the House during his brief stint there, and I was sorry to see him go.

By the way, not being a sports guy, I didn’t get the LeBron James reference. Apparently, he was referring to the image below…

Suarez takes public apology genre to new depths

2 Replies

Speaking of having a way with words…

Just so you know that politicians have no patent on the use evasive language in public apologies, you’ve got to check out this one from footballer Luis Suárez:

My apologies to Chiellini: pic.twitter.com/CvfkkjxzlM

— Luis Suarez (@luis16suarez) June 30, 2014

Somewhere, Mark Sanford and Bill Clinton are envious. And Ronald Reagan’s “mistakes were made” just seems amateurish compared to the towering passivity of “suffered the physical result of a bite.” That’s just poetry by comparison…

Bryan Caskey’s shotgun tie

4 Replies

I had lunch today with Bryan Caskey at his club.

We’d had drinks at my club recently, so it was his turn.

We talked about the kinds of things gentlemen talk about at real gentlemen’s clubs (as opposed to the trashy kind) — politics, whether one can actually travel ’round the world in 80 days, shooting for sport, etc. Then in the middle of the shooting part, I noticed his shotgun-shell tie.

So I thought it only right to share it here.

Then we went back to harrumphing about those political chaps, most of them vile Whigs and Jacobins, don’t you know…

Battle over the Washington Whatevers escalates

3 Replies

I raise this in case any of y’all would like to weigh in. I’ve never felt inclined to, on account of this being about, you know, football, and it is my firm belief that far, far more than enough words get spent on that subject on a daily basis.

But in case you want to discuss it, here’s the latest:

WASHINGTON — Fifty members of the Senate have signed a letter to the N.F.L.to urge its leadership to press the Washington Redskins to change the team name in the aftermath of tough sanctions against the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers for racially charged comments.

The position embraced by half of the Senate, and the willingness of the lawmakers to sign a formal request to Commissioner Roger Goodell, escalated the fight over the name and represented an effort to put increasing pressure on the league, which receives a federal tax break, and the ownership of the team.

“The N.F.L. can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur,” said the letter, which was circulated by Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and endorsed by Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “We urge the N.F.L. to formally support a name change for the Washington football team.”

Cantwell said that “we are going to find out if the N.F.L. can act against this kind of discrimination as quickly as the N.B.A. did.” She said she considered the Senate letter an important milestone….

I will say this: I do have a bit of trouble following the logic in the statement that what the NBA acted on earlier was “this kind of discrimination.”

I mean, let’s stipulate that both are instances of discrimination. The point can be argued, but let’s say they both are. By what logic could they be seen as the same kind of discrimination?

In one case, you got a befuddled, besotted old man spouting outrageous things during an argument with his mistress. At least, I think they were outrageous things. He was so incoherent it was kind of hard to tell. (How is it that people who can’t explain their way out of a wet paper bag can get to be so rich?) It was a sudden revelation of a surprising conversation.

In the other, you have the public, avowed, official, legal name of a team, one that it has never made any secret about. No one has been “caught,” or “exposed.” There’s nothing new or startling. Just a slow, gradually mounting tide of dissent against a name that the team has been known by since 1933, when it was still in Boston.

One was a startling incident revealing the character of a man. The other was a gradual, tectonic shift in consensus about the connotations of a word.

So basically, while “Redskins” may or may not be a name that a team should go by, what happened with that basketball team owner doesn’t bear on this one way or the other. The league might take action in this case as well, but the probability of their doing so doesn’t follow from what happened in a very different case.

I don’t know. I’m just in a pedantic mood today…

On the somewhat retro topic of Tebowing

17 Replies

I almost never read Cal Thomas’ columns. I find they tend to have a certain sourness about them, whatever the point. Or maybe the expression on his mugshot just inclines me to perceive a sourness.

Whatever the case, I was drawn in to his column in The State this morning by the image of Tim Tebow kneeling.

The main point of the column didn’t interest me much — it was of a certain type, which we see written from the perspective of an ideologue complaining that ideologues of the opposite camp have a double standard, and criticize people of the writer’s camp for doing a certain thing, but don’t criticize people of their camp when they do the same thing. You know what I mean. You’ve read this one a million times.

In this case, he was angry that people who vehemently defend a guy named Michael Sam — apparently someone who people who follow football know all about — did not equally defend Tim Tebow when he was playing the game and taking a lot of flak.

The part of that that interested me was the Tim Tebow part.

And here, I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me as I propose an anachronistic topic. I realize that everybody who follows football, or is really into Culture War stuff, thoroughly hashed and rehashed everything there is to say about Tebow years ago. Well, I didn’t. I get interested in stuff when I get interested in it. Like “The West Wing,” which I will continue trying to interest y’all in discussing until I run out of episodes to watch on Netflix… and probably far beyond.

The advantage to you of a topic like this is that y’all have already thought it out and have wonderfully well-honed, nuanced positions on it. So you’re ahead of me. Assuming you can still remember your positions after all this time.

While everyone who followed football was really, really into taking strong stances on Tebow, I was peripherally aware of him. And what I was aware of was the kneeling thing. The “Tebowing.” Because it was kind of hard to miss, permeating visual media the way it did.

And each time I saw the image, as this morning, I wondered what to think of it. And I was always of two minds, at least.

On the one hand, it’s great that a guy isn’t embarrassed about his faith, and willing to witness to it in public — and in his case, in a considerable spotlight. On the other hand, it was awfully showy and “look at me,” seemingly a textbook example of what Jesus spoke against in Matthew 6:5.

And I find myself wondering whether Jesus’ judgment on this topic was culture-specific. He was speaking in a time and place when public prayer was a way of raising yourself in public esteem. Whereas, as Tebow himself can attest, doing so now subjects you to considerable abuse and ridicule. Especially when you play for a New York team.

Finally, on the third hand (yes, I know this metaphor is no longer working), I like the Tebowing gesture totally apart from theological questions. I’m a big fan of Arthurian legend — I may have mentioned that before — and Tebow’s gesture evokes the kneeling knight, his sword held before him like a cross. Which, to a geek like me who thinks pre-Raphaelite paintings are cool and not at all trite or corny, is appealing.

Thoughts? Or is this just too anachronistic for y’all? If so, I won’t try yet again to get a thread going on the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars…

And for you sports fans, here’s Clowney on Fallon show

8 Replies

Talk about life in the fast lane…

How Benjamin, et al., are selling Bull St. ballpark

39 Replies

In case you don’t get these emails, I thought I’d share. The image above shows what the top of the e-blast looks like. Here’s the text:

In case you missed it, Sunday’s Op-Ed in The State made it clear that there WILL be a vote on the Bull Street baseball stadium this Tuesday evening. This vote will set the future direction of our city – survive or thrive!

Please share this article with your respective networks, post it on social media, and like it on the Building Bull Street page. WE NEED TO SHOW OUR GROWING VOICE OF SUPPORT!!!

Once you’ve read the article, please take a moment to contact Mayor Benjamin and Council members Cameron Runyan, Sam Davis and Brian DeQuincey Newman to thank them for their leadership.

The important final vote will take place this Tuesday, April 8th at 6pm. Plan on joining us at City Hall for this very important moment in our city’s future.

That’s followed by the text of the op-ed that was in The State over the weekend, which you can read here.

The vote is supposed to come today.

My NCAA bracket, all dressed up with nowhere to go

9 Replies

There are two times of year when I am sorta, kinda a sports fan.

One is during the World Series. Sometimes. Depending on who got in.

The other time is during the NCAA men’s Division I basketball tournament — but only if I’ve filled out a bracket.

If I haven’t made predictions, I’m not interested.

I used to never do this, until back in the late 80s or early 90s, when one of my reporters — I’ll call him “Charlie” — had a pool going, and nagged me to enter it. I told him I didn’t follow college basketball, and didn’t know anything about it. He said to enter anyway. He really, really wanted my dollar.

So, I filled one out. Here was my method — if it was a team that was big back when I was in college (such as UCLA), I chose it to win. If it was a school I had some vague connection to (such as having lived in Kansas briefly), I chose it to win. If it was a Catholic school, such as Georgetown, I chose it to win. When two of those factors came into conflict, I had a decision to make, but I didn’t spend more than a second making it.

And you know those little numbers next to the teams in the brackets, the ones that tell you how the teams are seeded? I didn’t know what those meant, so I ignored them.

I won the pool, in large part because — contrary to the conventional wisdom of the sports fans — I picked Duke to win all the way (in keeping with Rule 1). The sports fans in the pool found this very irritating. Every day during the tourney, I’d come in and ask Charlie how I was doing. “You’re still leading,” he’d growl between clenched teeth.

I won $26.

Since then, I’ve joined pools a number of times, but never done nearly that well again. I have not spent more than $26 total over the years, so by my method of rationalization, it’s not gambling. As long as I stay under that, I’m ahead — I can’t lose.

But today, I realized that the tourney proper starts at noon, and I haven’t filled out a bracket. Worse, I don’t know of a pool anywhere to join.

But I filled one out anyway, and I’m publishing it here, to give myself some kind of stake in the outcomes.

Note that I still sorta, kinda follow my three rules — except now I do pay some attention to the seeds. You’ll see that I have my alma mater, the former Memphis State, going to the Final Four. And since Wichita State was seeded No. 1, and I used to work in Wichita, I had it going to the final. But then I realized that I had broken the fourth rule, the one that doesn’t even need to be stated — Duke always wins. So I had to do some scratching out.

So we’ll see how I do. Please share your predictions as well. If I’d thought of this early enough, I could have set up a sort of non-pool blog pool, so we could compete to see who had the best predictions.

Maybe next year.

I am guilty of the unforgivable crime of walking on the gym floor in street shoes

12 Replies

On a couple of occasions recently, in the line of duty for ADCO, I have found myself out on the court at USC basketball games. A nonprofit client of ours has been blessed with donations that it has received in the form of oversized checks presented in front of the fans at Colonial Life Arena. (The client is the SC Center for Fathers and Families; the generous donors are TD Bank and Colonial Life.) I was there to help publicize the donations.

There are a lot of things a person might think as he steps out in front of a crowd like that, some relevant, some not: Do I have a good angle for the picture? Is my focus good enough to read the check? Cheerleaders are cute, but they wear a lot of makeup. Is it hard to smile that much? They’re also smaller than they look from the stands. The players are not. Am I standing in anyone’s way? Is my fly zipped? Who that I know is seeing me down here and wonders what I’m doing?

But the one predominant thought I had on both occasions was, I’m standing on the gym floor in my street shoes! This made me very self-conscious. I felt guilty, furtive, a scofflaw who was going to get yelled at by coach any second. (And in my day, coaches yelled what they pleased at us with impunity.)

Young people, and even some not-so-young-anymore people, are wondering what on Earth I’m on about. But when I was a student at Karr Junior High School in the suburbs of New Orleans in the mid-60s, it was deeply impressed on us that you never, ever walked on the shiny gym floor with street shoes on.

Perhaps I should explain what “street shoes” are. They are dress shoes, made of hard, polished leather. Like what your Daddy wore to work at the office, if your Daddy was old enough to go to the office back when men wore suits and hats. If he wasn’t, then your granddaddy.

We did not wear sneakers, athletic shoes, or whatever you want to call them to school. Or zoris, either (on the Mainland, y’all call them “flip-flops”). Nor did we wear jeans, or shorts, or T-shirts. We dressed in a manner that today is called “business casual,” only less casual than a lot of business people today.

Except in gym. In gym, we wore gym shoes. And shorts, and T-shirts. That’s how you knew you were in P.E. — you wore things that would be strictly verboten in English class. To participate in P.E. was to “dress out.” If you were sick and had a note from the doctor, you didn’t have to “dress out.” The rest of the time, you did.

And you wore those special shoes in P.E. shoes because you never, ever, for even one step, touched the gym floor with street shoes. Because gym floors were extremely delicate, and taxpayers shelled out gazillions of dollars to keep them perfectly shiny, and your parents couldn’t possibly make enough money to pay for the damage that street shoes could cause. It would be like mixing matter with antimatter, or crossing the streams (Egon!).

Stepping on the gym floor in street shoes was, in 1965, the civilian, junior-high equivalent of being a Marine and calling your rifle a “gun.”

We had dances in the gym in our street clothes on Friday nights, but it wasn’t a problem, because we were all completely conditioned to remove our shoes before stepping onto the gym floor. I have somewhere a Polaroid picture I took once of the pile of shoes under the bleachers. If I can find it, I’ll post it. Today, the kids would just wear casual shoes and clothes. But for social occasions that involved girls, you dressed up.

We spent the rest of the evening in our socks. We did the Jerk, and the Monkey, and the Boogaloo in our socks. We engaged in the delicious mystery of slow-dancing in our socks (we waited and waited for the band to do “House of the Rising Sun,” which was the only slow song they knew). If we were total rebels, with no respect for decency and societal mores, and no teachers were in sight (a rare occurrence), we did the Alligator in our socks.

It was what used to be called a “sock hop,” although I don’t recall our actually calling it that. It’s just that when you danced in the gym, you did so in your socks.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about while standing in front of all those basketball fans at Colonial Life Arena. I have no idea who is going to pay for the irreparable damage that my Johnston and Murphys surely did to that floor.

No wonder coach was yelling.

Open Thread for Tuesday, February 18, 2014

17 Replies

This promises to be another busy day on my end, so I thought one of these would be in order.

Possible topics, both on the metro front:

New police chief — Our own Kathryn was quoted in the paper as saying, in advocating for Rub.en Santiago, “If you’ve got a horse that’s winning the race, why do you want to change horses?” Meanwhile, some want to scrap the whole process, just as the five finalists prepare to go before the public.
Bull Street/ballpark — There’s a lot going on with regard to that this week as well. Here’s a story from The State today.

Of course, y’all can talk about whatever. Just be civil…

City shouldn’t shoulder the burden for Bull Street ballpark

51 Replies

As The State said, ‘The Columbia City Council seems to have been seduced by a voice very similar to the one that enticed Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, with its promise that “If you build it, he will come…”‘

Mark Stewart suggests this topic:

Brad.,
How about discussing how and why the City of Columbia is staking its future viability on the development of publicly fianced minor league baseball (and, frankly, private retail, commercial and residential development) at the Bull Street boondoggle?

I find this situation to be absolutely stunning myself.

And since he’s a good friend to the blog, and adds much to the quality of civil discourse here, I decided to start a separate post on the topic.

Also, it’s a big local issue that I’ve been remiss in not blogging about.

The thing is, I haven’t really been passionate on the subject. See, on the one hand, I really, really want to see professional baseball come back to the city. Not because I’ll personally go to the games, but then, I’m not someone who goes out and spends money to be entertained. No, my motivation is vaguer and more abstract than that. You know how the Godfather said, “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man?” Well, I have this idea that a city that doesn’t have a pro ball club can never be a real city. There it is. Not really an argument worth blogging about, is it?

And in the end, I probably reluctantly end up taking the position Warren and Cindi have taken, which is consistent with the positions we took on such things in the past:

A MINOR league ballpark would be a nice complement to the mega-development planned at the old State Hospital site on Bull Street. As a matter of fact, it would be nice to have a minor league team move back to Columbia as well.

But, as we have said in the past, any baseball park that can’t be built without Columbia taxpayers shouldering the load should not be built. If Greenville developer Bob Hughes wants a ballpark, he should lure private investors — including the team — to the table to finance it.

That’s not to say Columbia can’t participate in some limited way. The city already is on the hook to provide the development with infrastructure such as water, sewer and roads, which would include that needed to support a minor league ballpark. And we can see the city providing limited incentives beyond that to help lure a team to town, but only after the club puts its own skin in the game by making financial commitments toward building a stadium, which would reduce the chance that it would up and leave as soon as it gets a more lucrative offer from another city….

Already, the Bull Street redevelopment is costing the city more than anticipated (a bunch more — I don’t know about you, but $23 million is more than I make in a year). So the city shouldn’t be a spendthrift when it comes to something as nonessential as a sporting venue.

Basically, footing the lion’s share of the cost with public money violates the “Publix Rule” we set on the editorial board a number of years ago. The city put up about $300,000 to help a Publix come into the old Confederate printing press building. The store was a success, and has had a salutary effect on fostering the whole live-work-play dynamic in the city center, and been a plus to the local economy. We regarded that 300k as a good investment.

With baseball as with other things, the city should generally confine itself to Publix-sized incentives.

We descend into lawless chaos: Basketball player travels 7 steps, without penalty

12 Replies

My son shared this with me, knowing the sort of thing that makes me all indignant. Note that neither officials nor the announcer paid any attention when this player moved one foot or the other seven times, without dribbling.

Well, what are we to expect? We long ago stopped enforcing basic rules of the game “Shooter” regarded as “the greatest game ever invented.” Is it any wonder the world is in such sorry shape?…

Your thoughts on pro baseball in Columbia?

43 Replies

Cropped from an image by Tage Olsin,

You probably saw the news today:

Minor league baseball at a new stadium on the former site of the S.C. State Hospital on Bull Street wouldn’t adversely impact the two-time national champion University of South Carolina Gamecocks baseball team, experts who conducted a feasibility study for the city told council Tuesday….

My first reaction to that was, “of course it wouldn’t ‘adversely impact’ the Gamecocks, because ‘impact’ isn’t a verb.”

My second reaction was, “Nor would it adversely affect the Gamecocks, a team that was national champion two out of the past four years.”

My third was, “Why did we need a study in order to realize that?” And then I figured that people would make that bogus argument whether it made sense or not, so something was need to move past that objection.

Now that common sense has been seconded, what do y’all think about this plan to bring minor-league ball back to Columbia?

As you may recall, I was really disappointed when USC refused to share its new park — there was a AAA team interested at the time — but there’s no undoing that. I still think the best spot for a minor-league club would have been down by the river, but now that that’s out, the Bull Street location seems an OK second choice.

But no better than just OK. It would be better in a location that’s easier to walk to from the heart of downtown. Greenville has that; why shouldn’t we?

But if we have to settle, this plan’s OK. I guess…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits