TUPATALK: From field level

Just some odds and ends …

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DESTINY’S TOUCH

It’s amazing how the paths of life criss-cross on multiple layers.

I recently wrote about the 50th Anniversary of my high school’s state championship football team and on how I had heard via email from a great lineman on that team.

Grateful for his contact and kind words, I responded and he sent me another email and revealed something remarkable.

We attended high school in a community that was part of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, kind of like Broken Arrow or Jenks are to Tulsa.

I just assumed the players had grown up in Utah.

But my friend Dean revealed in his email he had spent part of his youth in Oklahoma!

He lived with his family in Midwest City when he was a kid which is where he said he probably experienced “my first test of real football.” In fact, his father’s side of the family all hail from Duncan.

I think it’s compelling that two members of a football team in Kearns, Utah, learn 50 years later they share an Oklahoma connection.

During my high school years, Oklahoma seemed to be in another dimension, a place I knew about mainly because of the Sooner football tradition and the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.

I remained ambivalent about the Sooners — although I might have rooted for them in the Game of the Century in 1971. I don’t recall.

Anyway, the communication with my friend has, in an inexplicable way, created even a greater appreciation of destiny’s broader vision and links that tie one’s life together.

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WHOLE HOG

I know it’s an empty hope, but I wish the net works broadcast more of the bowl games, even if an ABC/ESPN simulcast.

Go ahead and call me a dinosaur and a relic.

I miss the days when some bowls were shown at the same time on different channels and one could switch back and forth. I don’t know, but it seemed kind of another cultural glue that since has washed away.

Anyone who has read my column for any length of time knows that I am resolutely opposed to any kind of a college playoff.

I appreciate the old way of doing things, when polls voting for a national champion. I thought the consensus approach preferable. The problem with any playoff system is the best teams often don’t win, for one reason or another.

I believe expanding the college playoffs to 12 teams — which is only a road marker on the way to 16 — is a load of rotten potato soup.

College football had it right with a simple bowl game postseason. Every bowl was like a pageant, a celebration of football, The players were pampered and educated about the culture of the community.

That’s way it should be for college football players — a chance to play hard and have fun..

I believe the playoff system in college football is wrong. It detracts from the studies of hundreds of players who are going to make a living with their degree,

College sports should foster loyalty, physical conditioning, social integration and a sense of belonging.

Playoffs make college football a business. Winning is taken way out of proportion. It’s not the best thing for the players. It’s not the best thing for the fans, who have to pony up with more money at ridiculously inflated prices to attend more games. It’s not the best thing for an American culture already experiencing too much greed and too little fun and unity.

The goal of a college football player ought to be to prepare hard every week for the next opponent and to treat every game as a celebration of the sport. Players shouldn’t be constantly buffeted the pressure that if they aren’t perfect they could cost their school millions of dollars and recruiting luster.

A mistake is no longer just a mistake. It’s an act of betrayal.

No more fun. Either you play for a playoff contender or an also ran.

The problem is the media and the money people, in and out of corporations, hi-jacked the sport about 40 years ago. Too many of them — but not all — have constantly tried to shape college football into a business where the players and coaches and fans are just pawns to be manipulated to strengthen the hold of the controlling interests.

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PIZZA, ANYONE?

Speaking of TV, I think I still owe ESPN a couple of slices of pizza.

About 20 years ago, the network came to Tulsa to broadcast No. 1 Oklahoma taking on the Golden Hurricanes. One of Tulsa’s players, incidentally, was Bartlesville High graduate Brendon Swisher, who saw a lot of time that night at linebacker.

Anyway, I stood on the Tulsa sideline and had my camera in one hand and notebook in the other. By the way, I’m grateful the Guy Upstairs blessed with an odd set of skills — I write left-handed but do a lot of other things right-handed, including shooting a camera. That’s really come in handy to in photographing and keeping notes.

Anyway, after the game, I had to wait a while outside the gate for my ride (David Austin), who had been up in the press box covering the game for the E-E. While I waited, I noticed that near where an ESPN van rested, someone had put boxes of pizza.

I figured it was just a media thing, so after I saw a couple of reporter-looking people annex some slices, I thought I;d indulge as well. But, a few minutes later, a woman came out of the van, noticed the animal pleasure one gets in his eyes after devouring a tomato-sauce-cover-manna glazed over with cheese and pepperoni. She inquired who I was.

The gist of the conversation has been erased from my memory but something she said led my to understand the food was reserved only for ESPN employees.

My greasy hands writhed in fear-struck repentance.

All things considered, she was pretty decent about it. Meanwhile, I sneaked away looking for a hole to jump in.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: TupaTalk column