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17 Articles

MOMENT OF YOUTH

FOLLOW @SIFULLFRAME…

MOMENT OF YOUTH

FIRST TEAM TO WORST TEAM* I’m not writing because I enjoyed Michael Farber’s article on the state of Rutgers football. For this former member of a team there, the article was not easy to digest, though it was true. I hope the Scarlet Knights get out of the Big Ten and find a conference where they can compete. Maybe they’ll make less money, but I’ll bet everyone, including the alumni, will sleep better. Dick Matullo Roswell, Ga. Rutgers is not the worst football team. UMass is worst-er. Rutgers beat UMass by 27. Robert Blum Cypress, Calif. A BRUSH WITH GREATNESS As we left Georgia for the SEC outdoor track championship in 1969, my coach, Spec Towns, handed me a pair of brush spikes. I wore them in qualifying and in the finals of the 440 and ran nearly…

MIKE TYSON hit the canvas, and in 1990 it took the world a beat to realize what had happened. Tyson’s knockout loss to Buster Douglas—widely regarded as the biggest upset in boxing history—happened a hemisphere away, in Tokyo, in a pre-Internet era when gathering information meant getting ink-stained fingertips and highlights were held hostage by SportsCenter. Nearly 30 years later, inside a sold-out Madison Square Garden last June, Anthony Joshua went down, his unblemished record erased by a barrage of Andy Ruiz punches, and hot takes scorched smartphones before his trunks hit the mat. Clips, viewed by the millions, surged through social media. Even before Ruiz’s hand was raised, Joshua was trending on Twitter. This is losing, 2019 style. Ruiz, a flabby, 15–1 underdog who lobbied for the fight by sliding…

DAN SNYDER The impeachment inquiry The Redskins’ owner should be glad people in D.C. have more to worry about these days than the sad state of his franchise. ROB MANFRED Good journalism The commissioner should send a cornucopia to the reporters who broke the Astros sign-stealing story, since that distracted from the juiced-ball controversy. LEBRON JAMES Rich Paul Give your agent an extra helping of potatoes, LeBron. If he hadn’t signed Anthony Davis as a client, you might still be paired with Tyson Chandler in the frontcourt. JACOBY BRISSETT Andrew Luck’s retirement The former backup should be grateful Luck’s unexpected departure allowed him to prove he’s an NFL starter. BENGALS FANS Two Dolphins wins Miami beat not only the Jets but also somehow the Colts, making Cincinnati a strong favorite to secure the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft. CHASE YOUNG Big Ten scheduling Perhaps the…

HARRISON DILLARD 1923-2019

FOR ALL the attention that Jesse Owens received for striking a blow against racial intolerance by winning the gold medal in the 100 meters in 1936 in Berlin, there’s a certain irony that the man who would ultimately follow Owens as the Olympic champion in that event—12 years later, after two Games were canceled—served his country in World War II in a segregated unit. Like Owens, Harrison Dillard attended Cleveland’s East Tech High. He then went on to Baldwin-Wallace, where his studies were interrupted by the war. He served as a sharpshooter with the 92nd Infantry, an all-black regiment known as the Buffalo Soldiers. After his service, Dillard competed in a G.I. Olympic competition, where Gen. George Patton called him, “the best goddam athlete I’ve ever seen.” After returning to B-W, Dillard…

HARRISON DILLARD 1923-2019

TIM HEALY, the CEO of TackleBar football, wonders if we should start thinking of youth football like we do baseball. Kids progress from a league where they hit off a tee, to a league where the coaches pitch, to one where kids pitch on a condensed field and finally to a comparable version of baseball that we see at the professional level. In football, the equivalent would be a few years of flag football before transitioning to the full-contact game that, numbers show, is scaring off parents at an alarming rate. So how about a transitional game in between flag and tackle? In TackleBar leagues, players wear a harness wrapped around their midsections that holds into place a pair of foam bars that sit against their lower backs. The play ends when…

STREAM ANDY MURRAY: RESURFACING Available Nov. 29, Amazon Prime Video Andy Murray started the 2017 season ranked world No. 1. But while his longtime rivals—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, now all in their 30s—spent the next three years defying time and burnishing their G.O.A.T. credentials, Murray struggled to even step foot on the court. Murray’s reckoning with tennis mortality is the subject of a new film, which follows the three-time major champion as he battles a chronic hip injury. “I feel like this is the end for me,” an emotional Murray, now 32, says at one point. “My body just doesn’t want to do it anymore, and my mind just doesn’t want to push through the pain barrier anymore.” But Murray, who nearly retired last January, continued (and continues) to push ahead. The…

FACES IN THE CROWD

KALIN BENNETT ▸ Basketball ▸ Little Rock Bennett, a 6' 11" freshman center at Kent State, became the first player with autism to score in a Division I game, finishing with two points in a 97–58 win over Hiram. The 16th-ranked prospect in Arkansas, he was also the first recruit with autism to sign a letter of intent with a D-I school. PARIS BARRERA ▸ Cross-country ▸ Lander, Wyo. Paris, a freshman at Wyoming Indian High, won the state Class 2A championship in 20:13.57, beating three-time champ Hailey Jones to help the Chiefs win their first girls’ team title. She also won back-to-back races at the Lakota Nation Invitational and 5 Rivers Conference Meet. ZIMARI MANNING ▸ Football ▸ Long Beach, Calif. Manning, a senior wide receiver at Division II Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas, caught six passes for 109 yards…

FACES IN THE CROWD

EYES ON THE TIGER

WHEN HE was a boy, he imagined a different storybook fairy tale. Joe Burrow dreamed of suiting up for the college football team he had rooted for all his life, where his father and two older brothers had played. He grew up in The Plains, Ohio, became a star quarterback in high school and led his team to a state championship game appearance. In his dreams he would go on to lift the once-proud program that he revered—Nebraska—back to prominence. Maybe, when his imagination got carried away, even to a national championship. But Burrow’s dream was not meant to be. The Cornhuskers wouldn’t even give him a look. “They were questioning his arm strength and whatever,” says Joe’s brother Dan, a Huskers safety in the early 2000s. “All Joe ever wanted to…

EYES ON THE TIGER

THE SUN is setting quickly in Eugene as Mark Herbert strides across a sidewalk blanketed with rust-colored pine needles. For years he made this one-mile walk from his home to Autzen Stadium with some combination of his three sons by his side. His youngest two boys are heading to the same place, but they are traveling via police escort on Oregon’s team bus. Mark, a sales manager at a wood products company, is in a hurry tonight because he has never joined the March to Victory, in which Ducks fans gather to welcome the team when it arrives at the stadium. His middle son, Justin, is a senior quarterback who has (according to many scouts) the best arm in the 2020 draft class. With only two home games left, says…

WHEN THE RED FLAGS STOP WAVING

DALVIN COOK’S bun peeks out from behind the stainless steel refrigerator door. His dreadlocks are piled on top of his head, held in place with a brown rubber band. On this night Cook is busy stacking boxes of prepared meals so they fit just so inside his fridge. The small TV mounted on the wall plays the Monday Night Football pregame show. The sun is setting a dramatic blue and orange, and three lit candles are placed throughout the small open kitchen and living room. Cook is at ease here, barefoot in a white tank top and purple Vikings shorts. Aside from a Pop-a-Shot game against the wall in the living room, his one-bedroom apartment in suburban Minneapolis is sparsely decorated. The only sign of his status is a heavy gold chain…

WHEN THE RED FLAGS STOP WAVING

THE PASTOR, HIS PORCH AND HIS FIGHT WITH FAITH

THE PORCH doubles as the pastor’s office and his sanctuary. It’s where he writes sermons, studies philosophy and wrestles with everything from mass shootings to the violence inherent in pro football. It’s early September, the Florida heat sticky, bugs swarming the lights. Gold Terrible Towels hang above the pastor’s desk, next to the rolling book cart stuffed with self-help volumes, both tucked against the house, protected by the awning overhead. Youthful, bespectacled and clean shaven, the pastor wears Steelers flip-flops and a T-shirt with SHALIEVE splashed across the front. He clutches a Cuban cigar in his right hand, and he pauses for the occasional puff. The NFL season kicked off the night before, but he didn’t watch one play—he hardly watches football anymore. Instead, he retreated to the porch, hoping to…

THE PASTOR, HIS PORCH AND HIS FIGHT WITH FAITH

RUN! TILL! YOU! DROP!

“You’ll wonder how someone can inflict so much pain without a weapon,” says the sixtysomething man who goes by Lazarus Lake. He is leaning against a metal barrier on his property in Bell Buckle, Tenn., wearing a red beanie embroidered with GEEZER. He has a bushy white beard, a pot belly and square-rimmed glasses. He looks like a lumberjack Santa. It is 6:35 a.m. on an October Saturday. In a small clearing, just off an access road, Lake spray-paints a starting corral around a pack of six dozen men and women in tank tops and short shorts. We are just minutes from the start of the seventh running of Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, the multiday race that Lake thought of when he was a high schooler 50-odd years ago, thinking of ways…

RUN! TILL! YOU! DROP!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

NOBODY THREW more regular-season innings for the 2017 world champion Astros than Mike Fiers. But after Fiers slumped badly in August and September, Houston left the righthander off its postseason roster. His place on that championship team was a forgotten footnote until a startling assertion he made to The Athletic in a Nov. 12 story: The 2017 Astros cheated. Fiers alleged that Houston stole catchers’ signs from a camera positioned in centerfield at Minute Maid Park. The signs were read on a television monitor just steps behind the Astros’ dugout. A signal for an off-speed pitch would prompt someone to bang a dugout trash can loudly enough for the hitter to hear. The absence of such a noise would alert the hitter to a fastball. The use of devices to steal signs…

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

WON'T YOU BEAT MY NEIGHBOR?

PAST TAILGATERS saluting with Solo cups from atop pickup-truck beds, the Henderson State Reddies march. Past family members reaching for fist bumps and alumni clanging cowbells and cheerleaders ruffling pompoms. Past trilling piccolos and tooting tubas and the upright feather plumes of the Showband of Arkansas. Past a massive sign hanging from a student apartment, underneath a cloudless Saturday afternoon sky: OUACHITA PLAYS MADDEN ON ROOKIE MODE. Two weeks until Thanksgiving, this is rivalry season in the college football world. But for all of the Civil Wars and Big Games waged, for every Old Oaken Bucket and Holy Bronzed Oil Filter Wrench up for grabs, there is no annual tradition quite like the Division II Battle of the Ravine. Hefting shoulder pads and helmets, cleats click-clacking on pavement, Henderson’s players set out…

WON'T YOU BEAT MY NEIGHBOR?

THE RENO EXPERIMENT

WHEN DAVE ARSENEAULT JR. received the email, back in the fall of 2014, he assumed it was a mistake. At the time, Arseneault was 28 and living in Grinnell, Iowa, a town of 9,000 an hour from Des Moines that dubs itself—somewhat aspirationally—the Jewel of the Prairie. It’s the kind of place where you leave your doors unlocked, you can walk most anywhere in 15 minutes, and the nicest hotel is a converted middle school. Arseneault liked it. He also didn’t know much else. He had played basketball at Grinnell High, then at Grinnell College, the Division III liberal arts school on the north side of town, starring as a slow-but-savvy 6' 1" point guard. Now, five years after graduating, he held the title of “seasonal assistant” basketball coach, a job that…

THE RENO EXPERIMENT

MORE AT SI.COM SI: You have a two-way contract with the Celtics and the Maine Red Claws of the G-League. How is it working out? TF: Great. I go back and forth between [Portland] and Boston. The NBA is the best league in the world. But [with the Red Claws] I am playing 25 minutes, working on my game, staying in shape. SI: You drive yourself? TF: Of course! SI: How do you like Portland? TF: Aside from the cold? I like it. There’s actually a big African community here. SI: On Oct. 26, you made your NBA debut at Madison Square Garden. What was that like? TF: Man, while I was sitting on the bench, I was tapping some of my teammates on the side. I’m like, “This is crazy. I am actually in the NBA playing…

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