Homecoming Again!

Homecoming at the Harvard of the Midwest, and guess who headed back to campus.


Yes sir.


The World's Greatest.


For the first time since 1999.



At the NUBAA party at the Victor Hotel, tipsy and reminiscing. Short guys down front. (LtoR, Brian Rubin, Chris Rooney, The World's Greatest) Medium sized dudes in the middle row. (LtoR: Josh Barnes, Mike Nelson, Gerald Conoway) Tall guys in back: (D'Wayne Bates, Gladston Taylor, Larry Guess)


Caught up with teammates and classmates Friday, watched my Cats SMASH the lowly Hoosiers Saturday, headed to the Victor Hotel to connect again with old friends Saturday night, and then dragged my behind back to the Great White North Sunday.


Right now I'm at the office, exhausted and trying not to use the crutch chronic undersleepers call "coffee" to get through this work day. I can live with a little sleep deprivation. Besides, who needs sleep when you have friends?


Not me.


And seeing so many people looking so good after so long really inspired me. I mean, look at this:



My MAIN man, Q Period Period. Went from dislocating his finger at Day at NU '96 to building the Fuzion Empire. I admire this cat.


And this:



MC with Adrienne Samuels Gibbs, Senior Editor of a revitalized Ebony magazine and most importantly a made woman in the Medill Mafia.


Great times with great people, but at the same time I left homecoming with a bit of a uselessness complex. 


Understand that this is quite different from an inferiority complex, and this weekend had me feeling empowered and inspired. My classmates are some successful folks, and their peer pressure keeps me moving and improving.


No, the uselessness complex arises when you realize that your friends are bright motivated people who apply their minds to important matters. They teach law, or raise funds to build hospitals, or they're inside those hospitals performing surgery.


And me?


I spend my evenings in press boxes, cramming down pregame meals and pecking out stories that, apparently, a robot can write.


I mean, I love my job. If I didn't, I'd do something else for a living. But there's something about being the only sportswriter in a room full of high achievers that makes you wonder whether the world would even notice if you weren't there.


Raise your hand, for example, if you've ever thought to yourself, "Man, I need a  doctor."


Exactly.


Or raise your hand if you have ever needed to call a lawyer. For anything.


If you're older than 25 chances are you have.


NOW ask yourself if you have ever in your life caught yourself thinking, "You know what I need right now? A good sportswriter. If I don't find a good sportswriter right now, my day is gonna suck."


Ok, I'm sure at least one sports editor will read this blog, so you got me there.


But the rest of you?


That's what I figured.


A sobering thought on a tipsy weekend.


But the truth is people still do value stories, even if they are about grown men playing kids games. So a guy like me is still at least somewhat useful, even among the doctors and teachers and other indisputably useful folks who went to school with me. 


And the truth is seeing your friends doing so well inspires you to do even better. So before my next trip to homecoming I hope I can accomplish something that'll exert a little positive pressure on my peers. A book, maybe. Heck, I'd settle for a better blog.


And if I can't do that, I guess I'll but that robot sportswriter a purple T-shirt and in my place. 


Think anyone would notice?

Super Six Saturday!

Woke up this morning with a simple plan:


To jumpstart my metabolism and get back on the road to ripped after two weeks of relative sloth. Part A of the plan consisted of a trip to the gym, and Part B included a couple of hours at Toronto's Salsa Church.


Last time I was there they said the back of my head was so pretty they took a picture of it.



Also pictured, Stacy "SMB" White, the coolest Canadian Hoosier in all of Indiana.


After that, back to the Penthouse to watch the opening rounds of the Super Six World Boxing Classic.


Like I said yesterday, it's a big deal. And like I said yesterday, even at the height of Maple Leaf Madness I managed to get a non-local boxing story into the newspaper.


But sometime this morning, just before tuning into "Thrilla in Manila," (outstanding...we will discuss here soon) I scrolled through the guide and learned that the football team representing my school, the finest academic institution in the Big Ten would kick off against Magic Johnson's alma mater at noon.





Just that quickly my Super Saturday Sweat-a-Thon turned into a Super Saturday of Sloth. 


Ah well.


As long as it's super. It'll be even more super once my Cats smash the Spartans.
Kickoff is in five minutes.


Settling into the couch right about.......


Now.

Boxing Does Something Right

Yesterday we riffed on Bernard Hopkins' full frontal assault on mixed martial arts' manhood, and in response many of my readers -- okay, two of them... all two of them -- pointed out that the frustrating tendency of top boxers to avoid each other isn't exactly macho, either.



Sadly, this might be the closest these two ever come to meeting. As a bodybuilding contest, it's a draw


Point taken. 


As excited as we all are about the resurgence of the sweet science since May 2007, when Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya clashed in the biggest non-heavyweight pay-per-view ever, true fans realize that old problems could undermine recent progress. 


Fans both hardcore and casual understand that the biggest fight in the sport in 2010 would be a showdown between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, provided Pacquiao defeats Miguel Cotto in November. But as the Cotto bout draws closer, the Mayweather fight looks less and less certain. 


As predicted by the World's Greatest in September, Pacquiao's people are looking for reasons not to make this fight happen.


By now we know the drill. A fight we want to see bogs down in negotiations, marketable fighters pursue less lucrative options, and the maddening dance continues.


That's why I'm so excited about the Super Six Boxing World Boxing Classic.


Six of the top supermiddleweights in the world matched in a round robin tournament to determine the division's top fighter.


No bickering over contracts and purses. That's was all done month ago, the eventual settling of differences making this event possible.


No ducking tough opponents to safeguard spotless records. Four fighters enter the tournament undefeated, but all realize an "0" must go.


And no lacklustre matchups giving boxing fans reasons to watch something else. 


Just big fights between top contenders, and an impressive documentary detailing the beyond-the-ring struggles required to put this event together.





How big a deal is this event?


Put it to you this way:


In a hockey-obsessed city, with the the local team attracting unprecedented attention for their unprecedented suckitude, I managed to sell my editors on a story about the tournament, even though it includes neither Canadians nor hockey players.


That's big.


Look for the story in Saturday's Star. And if you can't track down the paper I'll post the link here.

Recommended Reading

Part I – The NFL’s Jackie Robinson
     Now that I think of it I know just who Woody Strode was.
       In grade 11 history class we watched Spartacus, and the only scene that sticks with me today is the one in which the King (can’t remember his name) forces Spartacus to duel to the death against a tall black slave with sculpted muscles.  But instead of finishing off Spartacus, the slave rushes at the king and is killed by soldiers.

     I remember telling my dad that I never knew Romans had black slaves. And now I remember him telling me that the guy who played the slave was Woody Strode, a football star at UCLA and one of the first black men to play in the NFL.

     It’s funny how “facts” can crowd out memories.

     If you’d asked me last week which player re-integrated the NFL in 1946 I would have told you it was battering ram running back and Hall-of-Famer Marion Motley.        
     Would have bet my left pinkie on it.

     And right now I’d have nine fingers because, like the link says, Motley and Bill Willis were the first African-American players to join the AAFC, which didn’t merge with the NFL until 1950.

     It took Alexander Wolff’s story in the Oct. 12 issue of Sports Illustrated to remind me of what my pops had already taught me:

     The Jackie Robinsons of pro football weren’t Motley and Willis, but Strode and Kenny Washington, who signed with the Rams in 1946.

     Both men were stars at UCLA, standouts even among other future pros, so why was it that neither could secure and NFL contracts until they had reached their late 20s? What kind of pressure did the African-American news media apply to the Rams’ ownership to force them to do the right thing? And why has Motley’s story supplanted Strode and Washington’s as the accepted narrative of how the NFL’s unofficial color line was broken after 12 years of segregation?

     Wolff’s piece answers those questions and more.

     Reading it you can only imagine the danger these two pioneers faced as the only two black players in a deadly sport.

     And that is the one (small) beef I have with the piece.

     Strode and Washington entered the NFL as trailblazers but a previously unpublished interview with Strode reveals they didn’t leave the league feeling like heroes.

"Integrating the NFL was the low point of my life," Strode told SI in an unpublished interview before his death. "There was nothing nice about it. History doesn't know who we are. Kenny was one of the greatest backs in the history of the game, and kids today have no idea who he is…If I have to integrate heaven, I don't want to go."

Strong words, and if I could change anything about the piece I’d include a few more on-field anecdotes detailing the reality that inspired them, the flagrant racism these two men encountered and overcame daily at practices and in games. 
     We learn about what they put up with in college – from All-America snubs to cheap –shotting opponents – but I’d like to know a little more about what happened in the NFL to push Strode to the stunning conclusion that he’d rather go to hell than integrate heaven.
     But again, a nit-picking grievance of a strong story.
     Wolff takes a topic that’s been covered relentlessly for a generation and still uncovers something fresh, forcing us all to re-think what we think we know about the integration of big-time pro sports.
     If you have the time, it’s worth a read. And if you don’t have the time, find it.

Part II – Slavery by Another Name

Discovered this one last month in a bookstore at the Tampa Airport, tucked away in the bottom row of paperbacks in the American History section. Like Wolff’s story, it forced me to reconsider my knowledge of a subject about which I’d considered myself an expert.

Photo borrowed from www.slaverybyanothername.com
On one level, the continued existence of slavery in the U.S. shouldn’t surprise a guy like me.

I’ve known for a long time that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free us all – that slaves in Union states like Maryland kept slaving right until the end of the Civil War.
      I also knew the Thirteenth Amendment didn’t ban slavery outright, that bondage is still legal in the U.S. if it’s part of a convict’s sentence. A good friend of mine – mentor, author and thinker Gary Freeman – is one of several very smart people working hard to close the loophole, but still it persists.
     In addition to all that many (and I hope most) of us are aware that whites employed numerous techniques – sharecropping, poll taxes, terrorism -- to keep Black citizens in the post-bellum South in a state of near-slavery.

Knowing all that it’s not tough to imagine that Southern states, even after the Civil War, would not just condone, but endorse, encourage and profit from Black bondage.
     That a network of so-called law enforcers would arrest Black citizens on the flimsiest charges, apply a series of fines, then sell these “convicts” to industrialists and plantation owners, who would pay the fine then force prisoners to work until they had satisfied the debt.
     That defined prison terms could morph into endless cycles of debt that bled into lifetimes spent performing soul-sapping, backbreaking, and uncompensated labour.

Photo borrowed from www.slaverybyanothername.com

     All of that is pretty easy to imagine if you’re familiar with the history of the post-reconstruction South. But imagining is one thing – confronting the jarring reality that all these things actually happened is quite another.
     And this book will jar you.
     Using and meticulous research and in painstaking detail author Douglas Blackmon tells the stories of the men and women on both sides of the system of Neo-slavery that drove much of the South’s economy deep into the 20^th century.
     He introduces us to John W. Pace, the Alabama plantation owner who purchased black convicts by the dozen and forced them to work on his farm.
     And to Warren Reese, the U.S. Attorney who was among the first to prosecute southerners for post-bellum slave trading.
     And to Green Cottinham, a black man born free but who died a slave in an Alabama coal mine.
     I know this post is starting to read like liner notes, but understand the publisher didn’t put me up to this.  Understand, too, that I wouldn’t waste space here if the book didn’t move me.
     More precisely, it kicked me in the gut with its brutal and unashamedly honest depiction of genocide for private and public profit, a system that reigned in the south for nearly three generations after the Civil War.
     Pick it up if you get the chance. It’s not an easy read, but it’s an enlightening one.

Radio Hit -- Da Art Of Storytellin'

No, not Outkast and The Ruler, though I'm sure that song brings a lot of us back to simpler times (for me, senior year at the Harvard of the Midwest).

Instead, I'm talking about the half hour I spent in the studio this afternoon with Sarah Meehan, host of Underscore on Hardcore Sports Radio (Sirius Channel 98). We've been trying to connect since late August, when producer Corey Erdman called to ask if I'd like to appear on the show to talk about "Long Shots," the narrative project that won me a National Newspaper Award a few years back.

Of course, I accepted the invitation, eager for any opportunity to talk to sports fans about how great I am. But when I stepped into the studio today the conversation quickly veered off into the handful of topics that give me greater pleasure than talking about myself does -- the relevance of newspaper sports sections, the effect of social media on the mainstream press, the future of sportswriting in a digital word.

In short, we explored the Art of Storytelling in a world that seems to have outgrown narrative.

If you missed the previous link to the podcast and want to hear my impassioned yet rational explanation of how narrative will never die, click here.

Could have talked all day, but I had to do all the damage I could in the allotted 25 minutes. I'm pretty sure I gave listeners something to think about without saying anything that'll get me fired. These days folks are sensitive about what employees say in public.

Anyway, if you're a media junkie or just a Morgan Campbell fan with time on your hands, please click the links and listen.

In the meantime, pardon me while I flop on the couch and continue my research for next week's assignment.

It's a rough life...

A Radio Hit

I know some of you guys just can't get enough of me. Between my damn near daily reports on the Toronto Blue Jays and my frustratingly intermittent blog posts, I'm hoping I've made a few fans, and that at least a handful of them are interested in how I'll spend the off-season.

Well, next week I head to wherever the the National League Championship Series starts for one more week of baseball before the off-season truly begins -- although with a new GM and plenty more changes coming for the Blue Jays I'm not sure how much of an off-season I'll really have. Anyway, I'm pulling for the Dodgers and Rockies because I love L.A. (especially when the rich uncle is paying) and I've never been to Denver, but I've resigned myself to a Cardinals/Phillies NLCS. So Morgan Campbell fans in StL and Philly, look for me next week.

But if folks need their fix now, tune into Hardcore Sports Radio (Sirius, Channel 98), where I'll appear on the The UnderScore with Sarah Meehan this afternoon.

I'm a familiar face at HSR studios, and a regular contributor on Pound for Pound Radio with Jason Abelson.

Doing what I do best, talking trash and talking boxing...but mostly boxing... on Hardcore Sports Radio

But this is my first time on the Sarah, so I'm excited.

As far as I know our we'll start by discussing "Long Shots," an eight-part serial narrative I published in the Star, and the winner of the 2003 National Newspaper Award for Sportswriting. The honour doesn't count for much at the office anymore, but it's nice to know that Sarah still cares.

Beyond that the conversation could head anywhere, and I'm excited to see where it might lead. If you're interested too, tune in today (Wed. Oct. 7, 2009) at 3pm. I should be on the air by about 3:30.

Till then, time to get moving on my day job.