ABILENE, Texas. Ryan Simmons is, to all appearances, a slightly scrawny high school senior with no particular athletic ability, but he's drawing attention from top colleges across the country as recruiting season swings into high gear. "I don't know what it is," says his mother, Pearl, a municipal employee. "He was drum major for the marching band all four years, so he never even put on a jock strap outside of gym class."
Simmons: "Over there's the Science Building, and behind me is Greek row."
Ryan has a talent that is prized by college admissions officers--the ability to walk backwards in a straight line at a regular pace while avoiding people, plants and inanimate objects and talking at the same time. "Ryan will probably end up at a big school like Alabama or Michigan," says Jim Stampfeld, a writer who follows the college recruiting scene, "but he can basically write his ticket wherever he goes."
"Take the steps one at a time so you don't trip you clumsy doofuses."
Ryan is projected as a freshman starter for the tour guide squad at whatever school he attends, as colleges find that a fast first step backwards and an ability to climb stone steps in reverse are critical factors in luring impressionable high school students and their parents to a campus. "I couldn't believe that guy," says Mykal Woods, a senior at Forest Park High School in St. Louis about James "D Train" Glenn, a consensus All-American tour guide at the University of Kentucky. "He said he'd take one more question about the Student Union, he answered it with one word and he was gone" down a brick pathway that leads to Rupp Gymnasium.
"You think you can beat me in one-on-one coverage? Just try it."
Amanda Weiss-Web of Brandeis University is representative of a new breed of campus tour guide who has used weight training and off-season conditioning to turn herself from a walk-on her freshman year to a potential lottery pick when museums and art galleries tap top college backpedallers on Draft Day '08. "Last summer I did everything backwards," she says. "Ate dessert first, broke up with a guy before I slept with him, the whole nine yards." The only knock against her is a tendency to draw illegal contact penalties in passing situations. "When it's near the end of the tour and kids make a run for the bookstore to buy sweatshirts, she'll bump them at the line of scrimmage," says Al Groe, head scout for the Whitney Museum in New York. "She needs to learn to release and talk to the parents. They're the ones who write the big checks."
WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke sent the stock market soaring today as he announced an immediate reduction in the number of post-season college football games, saying that "bowl inflation" was undermining the sport.
Bernanke: "Senator, did you even know there was a Poinsettia Bowl?"
Addressing Congress later in the day, Bernanke decried what he termed a "bowl bubble" that had been blown up by the demand for male-oriented holiday television content. The time would soon come, he warned, when teams with sub-.500 records would get bowl bids.
"If there's a bowl game on today, the office can't be open."
"Demand for televised sports events has increased exponentially over the past five decades as idle male workers, seeking to avoid gainful employment during the last payroll period of the year, cite network 'bowl' designations as a basis for deferring or avoiding altogether the manual labor that must be performed in order for worker productivity to return to normal yadda-yadda-yadda," Bernanke said in the dry, academic style favored by central bankers.
"Uh, yeh, I've got like a fever and an upset stomach, so I won't be in today."
Equity traders took the bowl reduction as a sign that the productivity would increase, and placed heavy bets in the manufacturing and service sectors. "With fewer bowls," said Craig Fiske of J.T. Edmunds Securities, "there's less absenteeism in Q4 and less water-cooler ####-chat in Q1."
Gator Bowl: The beginning of the end.
After the hearing Bernanke relaxed a bit, visibly exhausted by the volatility he has presided over in his first year as Fed chairman. "When I was a boy there were four major bowls--Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar," he told reporters. "Each had a basic commodity in it and that meant you didn't have runaway bowl growth. New fruits and vegetables don't pop up every day, you know."
The beginning of the end came with the Gator Bowl, he said. "Nobody eats alligators, nobody grows alligators--alligators contribute nothing to the economy. Now you've got bowl games named after towns like Fort Worth that don't have a friggin' Starbucks, fer chrissake!"
NEOSHO, Mo. This city in southwest Missouri sits smack dab in the middle of "Tornado Alley", a well-worn path taken by twisters as they rotate out of Oklahoma into the Kansas City area. "I thought tornadoes were a fairy tale, like the Wizard of Oz," says Southwest Missouri Teacher's College quarterback Justin Fairweather, who grew up in Pennsylvania. "Then I showed up for two-a-day practices in August."
"Holy freaking cow--can I get my tuition deposit back?"
What he found when he arrived on campus was a scene of devastation out of a disaster movie. "There were mobile homes flipped over like they were flimsy metal boxes," says defensive tackle LaRoi Englander, who came to Neosho from the South Side of Chicago. "When I got up close I saw that they were flimsy metal boxes."
But the Hilljacks, as the school's team is known, persevered despite the fact that their tackling dummies and blocking sleds had been blown across a three-state area. "These kids, I can't say enough about them," says coach Jim Ray Howell. "They were faced with a human tragedy of immense proportions, and they were able to completely ignore it and focus on football."
"Tornado" hot dog on a stick.
While no one died when one of nature's most violent storms hit this quiet community of 10,000, the town's fast food strip on Route 60 was demolished. "When I came down here on my recruiting trip there was a Domino's, a Pizza Hut, an Arby's and a Tornado Dog," a local hot dog and root beer chain, notes Englander. "I thought about transferring, but I decided to suck it up and eat nothing but dorm food if that's what it was gonna take."
Stuckey's: Try the peanut brittle frozen latte smoothies.
Other recruits agreed, and the Hilljacks recovered from an 0-2 start to finish the year 6-5 and win an at-large bid to the Stuckey's Praline Bowl, the first bowl game in SMTC's history. The Hilljacks will face the South Central Carolina State Brush Hogs, another Cinderella team that overcame adversity in their quest for a post-season bid. "We started the year with 23 players on academic probation," says Brush Hogs' coach Wendell Evans. "It took a heap of Driver's Ed and Introduction to Hand Fishing courses to bring everybody's GPA up to passing."
MOBILE, Alabama. It's half-time of the final game of the season for the Winn-Dixie Pee-Wee Falcons, and the long faces on the eight year-old players reflect the fact that they're down 12-0 to their opponents, the Continental Motors GMC-Pontiac Jets. As parents bring plastic bottles of sports drinks to their children, Rob McGurt, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama, tries to put together an inspirational talk to motivate his team.
Go Falcons!
"I'm kinda new at this," he confesses to a reporter. "One of the coaches has an out-of-state Thanksgiving dinner to go to, and the other went into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy this morning."
McGurt has a son--Robbie--who loves football, but the bespectacled academic has no interest in contact sports himself and so has limited his previous volunteer activities on behalf of the team to minivan driver. About to make what is probably the most important speech in young Robbie's life, he finds himself ill-prepared for the role of extemporaneous Knute Rockne.
"Win one for the Gipper, or at least your hamster."
All McGurt has to go on is a newspaper clipping he tore out of the Mobile Press-Register in which Alabama head coach Nick Saban is quoted as saying that his team's loss to small-time Louisiana-Monroe was a "catastrophe" comparable to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Nick Saban: Master of Football Metaphors.
"He's the top coach in the state, so I guess he would know how to get his players fired up," McGurt says, as he takes several 3 by 5 inch cards out of his back pocket, clears his throat, and begins to speak.
"Fellas," he begins. "We're down twelve to nothing right now. I hope you realize what that means."
"We have to score twice and make an extra point," says Derrick MacClary, a speedy half-back who returns punts and kick-offs for the Falcons.
"It's a little bit bigger than that," McGurt says with a bit of an edge in his voice.
The kids are quiet except for Rodney Taylor, Jr., the "monster man" in the Falcons' defense, who burps loudly as a result of guzzling his sports drink.
"You guys have probably heard of the Crusades, where the Christians tried to take Jerusalem away from the . . . uh . . . Turks--or somebody. Well, it's like that."
"We learned about Jerusalem at Vacation Bible School," says Joe Markey, an undersized boy who has been pressed into service at guard and defensive tackle because he's not fast enough to be a back. "And we made stuff out of gimp."
Gimp
Joe shows off his cool bracelet to the other kids, distracting them from the stirring lecture McGurt has begun.
"Kids, I need to you to focus," the coach-for-a-day continues. "We're down twelve points, so it's a two-score game," he says, holding up his index and middle fingers. "Anybody ever heard of World War II?
The Gap Band, of "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" fame.
"Is that the one where we dropped the bomb on the Japs?" Robbie asks his dad.
Tyrone Beasley begins to sing The Gap Band hit "You Dropped a Bomb on Me", and the other kids laugh at his disco-era dance moves.
"Tyrone, cut it out," McGurt snaps, and the boys become silent again. "What those guys"--McGurt points across the field at the Jets--"did to you in the first half was a tragedy of the sort we haven't seen since--the Spanish Inquisition."
Spanish Inquisition: "Let me know if this hurts."
Hector Ramirez, a pudgy boy of Mexican heritage, raises his hand.
"Yes, Hector?"
"If you have a question in Spanish I can answer it, Coach McGurt."
"Thanks, Hector, but I'm pretty good at slinging the como estas's around myself."
McGurt flips to his final note card, and resumes. "Anyway--you kids have got to put this game in perspective. You've got to understand that it's on a scale with the D-Day Invasion, the polio epidemic, and the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle."
The kids soak in McGurt's inspiring historical precendents as the referee approaches and directs the Falcons to line up for the second-half kick-off.
"Okay--you guys ready?" McGurt fairly screams, the veins visible on his forehead.
"I'm not," says Joe Markey.
"Why not?" McGurt asks, his voice as stern as a Marine drill sergeant's.
INDIANAPOLIS. Indiana State Police say they have arrested two computers assigned to Bowl Championship Series details following a "sting" operation in which undercover agents offered to trade sex and additional memory for improved BCS rankings.
"Oh yes, that's it, under there . . ."
"This is a direct assault on the integrity of the Bowl Championship Series and the NCAA brand," said NCAA President Myles Brand, "and since I'm the NCAA Brand, I take that personally."
Brand: "That's a stupid question! Next--"
According to investigators, BCS computers were approached by "cheerleaders" from slumping Division I schools who offered to "service their hardware" and "give them some memory". A transaction was arranged in which the computer's four kilobyte random access memory would be expanded to 48 kilobytes by an "Expansion Interface" in exchange for the creation of loopholes comparable to the "Notre Dame Exception" for big college teams on the bubble.
Radio Shack TRS-80: That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!
A complicated set of rules is used to determine which teams compete in the BCS bowl games. Certain teams are given automatic berths depending on their "bad" cholesterol, average miles per gallon (highway), and SAT Biology test scores. After the automatic berths have been granted, the remaining "at-large" berths are filled from a pool of teams whose alumni reserve the most hotel rooms in BCS bowl cities.
"Can't you do something about Penn State? My mother-in-law went there."
Computer-generated rankings are supplemented by human polls, which are viewed as immune to the sort of sexual favor-swapping that was the downfall of the BCS computers. "I####uy's really into college football," said Sergeant Dan Hampe of the Indiana State Police, "he won't be interested in sex until after the National Championship Game."
PARK RIDGE, Illinois. Bowing to pressure from the Association of Secondary School Math Instructors, the Big 10 Conference today admitted that it in fact has eleven member schools, and agreed to change its name to the "Big 11" beginning with the 2009 football season.
Or maybe it's twelve.
"We have historically counted our members using our fingers, but apparently that doesn't cut it anymore," said Commissioner James E. Delany in a bitter concession speech to reporters here. "We hired a guy with a solar-powered calculator a few years back to check our numbers, but he worked indoors all the time so his thingamabob was on the fritz."
"The Buckeyes have used the run successfully on first and 11."
The eleven member schools of the "Big 10" Conference are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. Penn State was added in 1990, "but somebody forgot to carry the one" according to Dwight Huggins, an algebra teacher in Danville, Illinois, who has led the charge to persuade the league to have its name accurately reflect the rules of arithmetic. "Our students will need to compete in a global economy," Huggins explained. "I can just imagine the snickers they're gonna get someday when they apply for a job at an accounting firm."
"He hits the hole and improves his GPA to 3.98 yards per semester!"
Insiders suggested that Northwestern, the "smart" school in the conference, had tipped off federal Department of Education officials who threatened the league with the loss of a Bowl Championship Series spot if it did not correct its error. "They've only won the conference football championship eight times in a hundred and ten years," said Lyle Koster, who covers the Big 10 for College Football Today. "That's like what--once every twenty years?"
KALISPELL, Montana. Joe Ray Diggs, head coach of the Western Montana State University Mountain Goats, is regularly mentioned when a school with aspirations on cracking college football's top rankings is looking for someone to turn its team around. For his part, he makes no secret of his aspirations. "I love Mountain Goat football," he says, "but I'd love to get a chance to coach a BCS team on New Year's Day."
"You guys are tackling like a bunch of English majors today!"
Last year Diggs led the Goats to 7-5 record and a come-from-behind win over Middle Kentucky State in the Craftsman Weed Wacker Bowl, a victory that he thought would result in a raise and an upgrade in the facilities he needs to attract top recruits. "Two of our fans who had a little too much to drink sprained their ankles on the same play," he recalls, "and the Weed Wacker people sent out a separate motorized cart for each of them."
Ridin' in style.
Diggs contrasts that type of top-quality service with the primitive vehicle he must make do with for home games. "They gave one of the ag students a scholarship on the condition that he bring his vegetable cart to school with him," Diggs says, shaking his head. "Sometimes there's no room for a middle linebacker if he's got a load of potatoes on there."
What he has to work with.
Like a number of other up-and-coming college football coaches, Diggs is taking a hard look at the budgets of other departments at his school, trying to find areas where they can cut back in order to cover his $400,000 salary, plus the other items he considers "essential" if Mountain Goat football is to succeed. "I tell our alumni, the problem is simple--we don't pay our players enough."
"If we could pay our players more, you'd see more scoring on Saturdays."
Diggs' game plan? To attack the weakest spot in the arts and sciences line. "That would be the English Department," he says with a mischievous smile.
"Somebody cover that adjunct professor in the slot!"
Western Montana has a ten-member English department, with salaries ranging from $34,000 for an assistant professor to $70,000 for the chairman of the department. "There's a lot of duplication there," Diggs says. "I went to the book store and somebody named Shakespeare is assigned reading in six courses," he notes with a laugh. "I mean, hello? Use man-on-man to cover the guy."
"Try not to use the passive voice, and I'd double-team the temperamental wide receiver in the subplot."
English department members are understandably upset by the attention Diggs' scrutiny has brought them, saying they are only following standards set by the Modern Language Association, the leading professional organization for English instructors. "Just like Coach Diggs, we need to have qualified personnel at every position from Beowulf to the present," says professor Ewell Lee, a specialist in Victorian novelists. Checking the department roster, Diggs disagrees. "They've got one guy who specializes in Middle English," he says, growing angry. "Do I get a separate coach for middle linebackers?"
"Unless you can diagram a sideline-and-up pattern, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go."
Diggs says he holds no grudge against the language of Milton and Hemingway, and is only trying to make Western Montana a stronger institution. "I want to have an English department," he says with a serious expression, "that our football team can be proud of."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
