The Old Perfessor

I'm a professor of journalism at Wingate University near Charlotte, N.C. I've also written about sports for newspapers and other publications for more than 30 years. This blog's about journalism, sports and whatever else I find interesting on any given Sunday or other day, for that matter.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A man of words

The English language lost one of its most staunch (staunchest?) defenders this week when New York Times columnist William Safire died at age 79.

And the word choice question above is just the kind that Safire, a former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, loved. His “On Language” column for The New York Times gave unerring guidance to readers about grammar, usage, punctuation and related issues. An “oracle of language,” the Times called him in the headline for its obituary.

He was also known for his commentary about politics, a staunch -- that word again -- conservative voice coming out of a bastion of liberalism. And the notices of his death portray him as that increasingly rare species in this polarized day and time, the conservative champion who had the near-universal respect of liberals. (He did, however, take some flak from the left in his final years for his columns which attempted to corroborate the link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in the run-up to the Iraq war.)

But regardless of politics, it’s sad to note the passing of someone who loved the language as much as he did. In a time when 140-character tweets, texting ("idk, r u?") and e-mails without a single capital letter chip away at its foundation (the kind of cliche Safire would’ve hated), our mother tongue needs all the back-up it can get.

Friday, September 25, 2009

The best and worst of weeks

Two stories, separated by three days and 150 miles, but worlds apart in other ways, bookended what easily has been the most eventful and emotional week in the more than 20-year history of Wingate University football.

The sad story comes first. On Monday, in a courtroom in Union, S.C., former Wingate football player Pernell Thompson, 22, pleaded guilty to the murder of 16-year-old Marisha Jeter in January of 2008. Thompson, who played wide receiver for the Bulldogs for three seasons, avoided a possible capital murder conviction with the plea agreement, but will spend the rest of his life in prison.

I'll let the readers of this piece follow the link to the news accounts for the details, but the basic story is that Thompson and his wife, Yolanda Dee Thompson, were charged with planning and committing the murder of Jeter, a cheerleader and honor student at Union County High School. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials said that Thompson killed the young woman, with whom he had had a relationship, to prove his love for his wife.

It's a horrific tale, and both the victim and the man convicted of killing her seemed the least likely people to have ended up involved in it. Like Miss Jeter, Thompson was a high school honor student, an Academic All-State selection as a football player at tiny Jonesville High School near Union. At Wingate, he was involved in Campus Outreach, a Christian ministry for college students. By all accounts he was a personable, if quiet, young man. Many of our juniors and seniors were his classmates and/or teammates and many are still his friends.

And even if you're 21 or 22, it's a little hard to get your mind around all of this, which maybe you've only seen before on those crime shows that are all over TV now. It's different when it's someone you know.

I've had a number of conversations about this with my next-door office neighbor at school, religion professor Heather McDivitt. She has visited Thompson in jail, talked with his family and plans to continue visiting and counseling with him in prison. Had there been a trial, she would have been involved in the penalty phase which would have followed a conviction, as a character witness. She has also done a great service by talking to many of Thompson's friends as they try to cope with what's happened, noting how overwhelmed they've seemed by all of this.

Which makes what happened to the football team on Thursday both less and more important in the scheme of things. While their former teammate began his prison sentence in a Columbia, S.C., correctional facility, the Bulldogs played their first nationally-televised game ever.

They travelled to Greeneville, Tenn., to play South Atlantic Conference rival Tusculum in a game carried by Fox Sports Network South and CBS' College Sports Network.

Small colleges like Wingate, which plays in NCAA Division II, have historically struggled to get media attention, especially if they're in large media markets. And I've always disagreed with what I've felt is the common sports journalist's misconception that an event has to be "big" to be worthwhile.

But the proliferation of media in the last decade or so -- with more cable outlets, and websites and blogs on the Internet, has been a boon for smaller schools. The Fox Sports networks have televised several Division II football games over each of the past few seasons and even the major networks are catching on, with CBS now carry the Division II and III football and basketball championship games. (The DII basketball title games are often more entertaining than the game that ends "March Madness" in prime time.)

So it was fun to see us get our moment in the national spotlight -- even if the production values weren't what you see on ESPN on the weekends. Because as much as I hate to admit it, being an old newspaper guy, the act of televising something gives it legitimacy.

And it brought a smile to my face to follow Facebook traffic during the game -- the students and alumni who make up the bulk of my friends really were enjoying the fact that they could see their alma mater play on TV -- just like their pals who went to UNC, the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech, etc., can do nearly every week.

And, best of all, there was a payoff. The game was entertaining, up for grabs until the final two minutes. Wingate wrapped it up with a gamble worthy of a big-time football game, risking a 35-31 lead by going for it on 4th and 5 from the Tusculum 35. Instead of a first down, the Bulldogs got a touchdown pass -- a lightning strike from quarterback Cody Haffly to wide receiver Delric Elllington.

One had to be happy for this team, that a week that had started so profoundly awfully had turned out so well.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

When David and Goliath play hoops

A big college football Saturday is going on as I write. But I'm a basketball junkie at heart and I follow the college sport year-round, so it’s always fun this time of year to see the schools release their schedules.

And in the last couple of years I’ve become intrigued by the pre-season "exhibition" games that Division I teams have started playing against NCAA Division II opponents. These match-ups started happening after the NCAA began to discourage exhibitions against touring amateur teams like "Athletes in Action" or international squads.

(I remember when I was a University Florida student, the Gators had one of those games against the national team of Ecuador, whose best player was a 5-foot-4 guard who wore glasses. I think UF won by about 70 points.)

Playing the Division II teams probably is a more meaningful exercise for a big-time program than playing a group of barnstorming former college players. And for the small school, it’s a great chance to show what you’ve got and play in a big-time atmosphere. The Wingate women's basketball team will get such an opportunity when they go to Cameron Indoor Stadium for a pre-season game against Duke on Nov. 5 in Durham.

"It's definitely a bigger stage than we usually find ourselves on," Bulldogs coach Barbara Nelson said. "We know where we belong, but when you have an opportunity to test yourself against a team that's in the Top 25 in a higher division, it's exciting."

Nelson explained that these games are generally several years in the making and usually are helped along by personal connections. Nelson, a successful high school coach at Providence Day School in Charlotte before coming to Wingate, has had several former players commit to and/or play for the Blue Devils over the years.

"You almost always have to have that personal connection to someone," said Nelson, who had originally arranged a November 2010 game at Cameron with Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie. But Wingate moved up on the list when another school backed out of this fall's game, Nelson said.

As another example of this, little Coker College in Hartsville, S.C. – with an enrollment of about 1,100 students -- will send its men’s basketball team to take on mighty Pittsburgh of the Big East. Pitt coach Jamie Dixon played for Texas Christian in the mid-1980s, when Coker coach Dan Schmotzer was an assistant on the late Coach Jim Killingsworth’s staff at TCU.

Two other Conference Carolinas teams will have similar daunting assignments in November. It will be fun to see how Belmont Abbey, coming off its most successful season in a while, fares against the North Carolina Tar Heels. And I’ll also be interested to see what Coach K and the Duke men's team do with Pfeiffer’s mass-substitution, helter-skelter game. (Pfeiffer took on the Tar Heels a few years ago, taking the expected beating. But the 140-104 final score sounds like it was a good evening’s entertainment anyway.)

I’m aware of only one occasion where the Division II team has pulled off the huge upset, when Grand Valley State knocked off pre-season No. 8 Michigan State in double overtime in November 2007. But the visitors had reached the Division II Elite Eight the previous season, and had played the Spartans a tough regular season matchup before losing in the final two minutes.

Which is the dilemma for the Division II school – you can’t be so good that you’re actually a threat. "We’ve tried to get one of these games for our men's team for the last couple of years," an athletic official at one Division II school told me recently. "But we've had some good seasons lately, so it's been tough to schedule."

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

No sport for gentlemen -- or women

Civility, already reeling from a series of body blows, took a couple more punches in the world of public life just recently. I'm not sure how many more rounds it can last.

That's probably a bad set of metaphors for an entry that's mostly about tennis. But the sport historically associated with white outfits, gentililty and cathedral-like silence during play was the source last week of yet another display of boorish behavior by someone who should know better.

Serena Williams exited the women's championship field in the U.S. Open in New York with a disgraceful volley of profanity and threats against a line judge who called her -- erroneously as it turned out -- for a foot fault in the last game of her semifinal against Belgian Kim Clijsters. Then, to their credit, match officials added a penalty point against Williams for her behavior, ending the match.

It's all over YouTube -- including a post-match press conference in which a reporter inexplicably asks her if the weather contributed to her losing her temper. I loved the reaction.

But not so much the tantrum, of which there's been an epidemic lately. Someone says or does something you don't like, or something happens that displeases you, just go off -- it's OK. (See South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson's reaction to President Obama's health care claims and Kanye West's hijacking of the microphone as country singer Taylor Swift was being recognized at the Video Music Awards.

All have issued pro forma apologies -- Wilson to the president himself, Williams in a half-hearted statement on her website, probably crafted by a PR person, and West on the debut of Jay Leno's new NBC show. I'd give West the highest marks for sincerity of the three, but I'm not sure how much of a compliment that is.


But, as someone who's covered tennis from time to time over the years and remains a fan of the sport, I was very interested in the reaction in the media and the tennis world to the Williams incident. As anyone knows who has followed the men's game for a while, abuse of the officials is nothing unsual -- see John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and the Romanian Ilie Nastase, for three memorable examples. These volatile stars were pretty much allowed to scream, curse, spit, throw rackets, etc., with impunity in the Seventies and Eighties -- don't want to default the biggest drawing cards out of the tournament, after all.

But Williams' outburst seems to be the most extreme example of this on the women's side. And I had to shake my head at this column by a New York Daily News writer, who seems to believe this is progress.

Maybe it's just the difference between the New York state of mind and my traditional Southern upbringing --- where for better or worse, even phony politeness is considered more desirable than genuine rudeness.

I can't help it. I just think people ought to behave better. And I'll kick the living crap out of you if you dare to disagree.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Civility, good sense and Sept. 11

I started this blog three years ago, around the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

And as that anniversary of that awful day comes around again tomorrow, I've gone back to read what I wrote at the time. You can click on September 2006 in the archive if you want to check it out.

I'm sad to say that my take on the aftermath of the attack on America remains the same: the brief period of national unity and civility that followed those terrible days seems to be gone, maybe irrevocably.

In no way am I suggesting that we should all believe the same thing and always agree with the government, whoever's running it. As I tell my class in Media Law and Ethics, where the First Amendment is the foundation of everything we discuss, there are places where everyone always agrees with the government, but you don't want to live there.

But I've been really dismayed by what I've read in the last month or so about the tone of the "debate" in some of the town hall meetings on health care reform that senators and congressmen have been holding around the nation. And this feeling came to a head as I looked at news reports of the President's speech to Congress last night outlining his plan.

During that speech, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., couldn't contain his feelings as he listened to the President's assertion that no illegal immigrants would receive coverage under his proposed plan. I'm sure you've seen the moment already, but just in case, click here.

That statement, more than anything the President himself said, seems to encapsulate where we are in public discourse these days. Wilson's outburst was roundly criticized, even within his own party, and he apologized to Obama later that night, saying that he still disagreed with what the president said.

Of course, not everyone believed that what Wilson did was wrong. Many conservatives jumped to his defense, saying it was no worse than the boos and heckling that George W. Bush received from Democrats during his appearances before Congress. Some of these indignant comments on the Internet made it sound like Bush had to deliver his State of the Union messages from behind a chicken-wire fence, dodging beer bottles like the house band at rowdy honky-tonk.

I don't exactly rememember it being that bad, and I don't think he was ever called out as a liar on these occasions by the opposition, but the commenters have a point. There's been incivility and rhetorical excess on both sides. (One conservative on Facebook posted links to caricatures of Bush as Hitler on the Internet to show why he's angry at the left -- I'm still trying to figure out how Bush and Obama can BOTH be like Hitler, who's having a great second career in the U.S. as a symbol of the horrible other side.)

But then again, as the late Molly Ivins once wrote in a column about "Bush-haters," the Texan was probably the most reviled President since, let's see.....the guy he replaced? Remember the claims that circulated that Bill Clinton was involved in murder and drug-dealing? There was actually a "Clinton Body Count" of mysterious deaths -- one from a heart attack, apparently -- that the president was associated with.

It's enough to make one's head spin, and more damaging, to discourage people who want to engage in serious debate on the issues. I once heard Clinton in an interview say that people should not be talking about "who's good or who's bad, but who's right and who's wrong." I've agreed and disagreed with Presidents in my lifetime, but I honestly believe that all of them did what they did because they felt it was in the best interest of the country.

So what does all of this have to do with Sept. 11? In honor of our fellow citizens who died just because they were going about their everyday business in a free country, I'd love to see all of us give the presumption of good will back to those whose views we oppose. My Facebook friend Tommy Tomlinson has expressed these same sentiments much more eloquently in his latest Charlotte Observer column. You should click and read it.

People are entitled to their views, but maybe we could at least take a break from talk of "America-haters," "fascists," "socialist agendas," and "evil" this and that. Maybe conservatives could stop questioning liberals' patriotism. Maybe liberals could stop questioning conservatives' common decency. All of us are Americans, just like we were on Sept. 11, 2001.

I wish it would happen, but I don't know....