Bad Calls, Missed Opportunities, and Lawsuits

I haven't paid a ton of attention to high school football in years. Aurora Christian had a strong football program when I was in high school, and they made three state title games in the six years after I graduated, winning two of them. Logan has been on the roster of Aurora Central Catholic's football team for four years, and they made the playoffs three of his years. None of those trips resulted in deep runs, but it's not like ACC was a slouch by any stretch of the imagination. I also called some DVC football games during my tenure at WONC, including an overtime thriller between Naperville North and Neuqua Valley, as well as one of the classic Naperville North-Naperville Central battles that ended up coming down to a missed field goal as time expired that allowed Central to escape with a win.

I can appreciate good football, even at the high school level. But I've also been critical of the powers that be at many levels of the sport... okay, mainly at the NFL, and to a degree at the Cartel that allowed the BCS to carry out injustice for so long. But bad decisions can stretch down even to the prep level. And we saw that in action over the weekend.

The Future of Football

With the NFL's offseason in full swing, a lot of crazy stuff has been happening. We've been documenting it over on UKEndzone. Between podcasts and articles, you can keep up with just about everything going on. Yet with the new discussions going on this week, I feel compelled to address what everyone else is talking about.

On Monday, San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland shocked the world by announcing his retirement. He had just finished a rookie year where he played all but the final two games, and still racked up 84 solo tackles, a sack, five pass deflections, two picks and a fumble recovery. He earned my vote for Defensive Rookie of the Year, which helped him place fourth in UKEndzone's voting.

Screenshot from overthecap.com.

He was in line to replace Patrick Willis at middle linebacker for a 49er team that was falling apart. He was on a pace to make about $3 million over the course of his rookie deal, and made about $600,000 in that one year. He'll have to return some of that with his retirement, but he commented that it's not about the money. To him, it's all about his health and being able to spend time with his family. I'm sure it was a tough decision to make, and I commend him for it.

Of course, the meatheads came out in full force after the fact. One major rule of the Internet is "Don't read the comments," though I do anyway because some of them are amusing. Of course, you had the obligatory "Borland is a quitter," "The pussification of America continues," "You're screwing over your team," comments, all of which are easily refutable and I won't waste my time doing so here. The alarming thing, however, comes from some professionals. SI's Michael Rosenberg penned a piece that boggles the mind (I linked to a tweet and not the article, because I refuse to give SI ad revenue for clicks to asinine content), and then, not to be outdone, an NFL shill came out to respond to Borland's appearance on Outside the Lines today.

Here's the thing: riding a bike or a skateboard can cause harm, yes. So can youth football. Concussion protocol has improved in the NFL, and by extension, at the NCAA, high school, and even youth levels. Problem is, it's not just concussions. All those little hits to the head add up over time. As more research has been done, it comes out that changes have needed to be made, but none of that disputes the fact that yes, football can be dangerous, even if it is "safer than ever before."

Photo by Patrick Kunzer (Daily Herald)

Don't get me wrong: I love football. I have since I was a kid. It wouldn't have comprised just less than 50 percent of the posts on Confessions of a Sportscaster (a total of 218, unless I missed some way back when before I started tagging these posts) if I didn't. I enjoy throwing the ball around with friends and using my height and reach (which gave me the nickname Rodan) to play decent defense. Before I started high school, I got a call from then-Aurora Christian head coach Oz Price about joining the football team. I remember telling him that I would think about it. I told my mom, who was in the room at the time, about the call. She told me there was no way I was playing football. I don't blame her; I was 5'11" or so and about 120 pounds soaking wet at the time. I probably would have gotten hurt, and this was before the concussion issues really started to come to light. I look back and kind of wonder, "What if?" sometimes, but I don't think missing out on playing football hurt me any.

That said, I do wonder about the future of the NFL and football in general. For right now, it seems like it's too big to fail. The NFL brings in billions of dollars of revenue a year. There are millions of kids who play high school football every fall in the hopes of playing in college, then thousands who play in college in hopes of making it to the elite level of the NFL. The success rate of those high schools kids isn't very high, but their chances of getting hurt remain. Positive steps have been taken with regards to injuries, but even so, there will be parents who will be like mine and refuse to let their sons participate in football because there are and always will be risks. It's possible that down the line, I will be one of those parents as well.

For all we know, the NFL will continue on as it has been and continue to grow in popularity, and the lower levels will also get along just fine. Even if they do, the NFL needs to take a better approach than by just saying, "Oh, the game is safer than it's ever been!" Many of their decisions prioritize "protecting the shield" over protecting its players and alumni. Being willing to come further forward than they have and taking increased steps for player safety (say, working with helmet developers or more closely with neurologists while also being open minded about head injuries) will go a long way towards maintaining the integrity of the shield.

Play Fair, Win With Humility, Lose With Integrity

I know most of my posts on here deal with major sports stories about who's who and what's going on in the world of sports (I even said so myself in a Beacon News article posted last week), but I do need to come to the forefront when things unfold like they did in Peoria yesterday.

At work this morning I saw an article on the Tribune's website about the Class 2A Boys' Basketball Championship game and took note of a peculiar headline about the losing team, Seton Academy, refusing its second place trophy. Based purely off the headline, I wasn't quite sure what to think, though reading the article answered a lot of questions. More on that in a moment.

As a sports fan who has maybe too much of a competitive nature (thankfully not to Michael Jordan's extent), in and of itself I don't necessarily mind seeing a team refuse to accept a trophy that isn't for a championship, though the context does somewhat override this. I'm personally not a big fan of the "Everyone gets a trophy!" mentality that seems prevalent in society today, though this isn't the case in the IHSA. You get a plaque for winning smaller tournaments at regional and sectional sites, and then if you make the Top 4 you get a trophy. In order to get one though, that requires 5 or 6 straight wins, and it's hard. In my four years at Aurora Christian, we only won one regional (my senior year, the year I predicted we'd at least get that far) and fell just short against Byron for a sectional title. It was very disappointing, given that I was a senior and that was the end of my direct involvement in ACS basketball, but I was proud to be part of that group of guys that added to ACS lore (as head coach Don Davidson put it, "Good teams play in March," and the sectional title game was in March. We fit the bill.) Had we advanced beyond that, I would have been more than happy to hold a trophy of some kind had we made it to state, even if it was only a 4th place trophy.

Then I read the Tribune article.

Top 5 Confessions of 2012

I've had this little side project in operation now for probably about 15 months, and for those of you who have been regular readers of Confessions of a Sportscaster, I thank you for supporting the fruits of my down time that aren't spent sleeping, eating, or planning a wedding with my wonderful fiancee. So with New Years Eve upon us, I wanted to count down my Top 5 posts from 2012 based on page view as a quick look back on the big storylines from 2012.

5. COAS/SSLYAR Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 5 (October 4)
In August I started regularly playing basketball once a week with my best friend Nathaniel, who around the same time started up an NFL blog called "Someone Still Loves You, Alberto Riveron". It's an entertaining read with thoughtful analysis, smart picks, and awesome jokes and parodies. Around that time I approached him with the idea of doing a joint weekly post alternating between our blogs of picking games against the spread, and it came to be one of the high points of my week. For this edition, I think viewership may have been boosted by a mention of getting followed on Twitter by Green Bay's M.D. Jennings, but probably more so by having a GIF of "IT'S OVER 9000!", mentioning Bane and maybe Nathaniel's fantastic GIF of Eli Manning.

4. COAS/SSLYAR Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 15 (December 13)
Another of the picking posts (I ended up doing all the odd numbered weeks, Nathaniel did the evens. I'd like to do this again next year, in which case we'll switch. Fairness above all else) that turned out pretty well. It was my most read picks post (though not my favorite, that honor goes to my post with the Matt Schaub PSA about getting kicked in the balls) and a fun one as well. I think most of my views were bolstered by the sheer mention of Grumpy Cat (given my most recent set of search results that have led to COAS. You roll with what's popular.)

3. Game Notes: Elgin High School vs. Auburn High School (3/9/12) (March 10)
I started this blog while I was employed as a board operator at WROK up in Rockford, Illinois in the fall of 2011 before starting my current job with Nokia back in April. Before I finished up there, I was given an opportunity to be the third man in a booth (well, top row of the bleachers at Dundee-Crown High School) with a couple long time radio pros for an IHSA sectional title game. This was a fun game to call, and I also got to see one of the best prep players in Illinois in Fred Van Vleet, now a freshman at Wichita State coming off the bench, though I'm sure his role will grow. He's probably the second best prep player I've ever seen in person other than Ryan Boatright, who I coached against as a senior in high school.



2. A Legend Tarnished (July 2)
This was a fun one to write. I had touched on the Penn State scandal a couple times prior to this one, but with continued hearing about just how far the evil on that campus reached, I was reminded of a class I took on leadership my senior year at North Central. Before posting it, I even passed it along to my professor from that course, Stephen Caliendo, to have him look it over before I posted to see what he thought. He said he thought it was "very nicely written", and he was glad that his class had a lasting impact on my thought process. He was also gracious enough to pass this post around, which I think helped greatly.

Game Notes: Elgin High School vs. Auburn High School (3/9/12)

 Final Score
Auburn 67, Elgin 56

Summary
In a fun 4A Sectional Championship game and the first game I've ever called for commercial radio, we were treated to something of a slow start, as neither team really got anything going offensively early on. After a couple minutes of jitters, the Auburn Knights (30-2) started to find their niche, going ahead 11-6 after 1 quarter. In the second they started to pull away a little more, as the Elgin Maroons (26-4) couldn't buy a basket. The Knights led 28-17 at the half. The 3rd quarter started about even, before the Maroons made a huge run towards the end of the quarter, pulling within 3 at 35-32, getting the crowd involved. But in the 4th, the Knights took over, slowly rebuilding their lead as Elgin didn't have enough in the tank to complete their comeback.

Key Stats

• Elgin: 18-52 FG, 17-27 FT. Elgin was just ice cold last night. They shot 1-10 in the opening quarter, and finished 4-18 in the first half. It's amazing to consider that they shot so poorly, but never trailed by more than about 11 points the entire game. But you look at the margin, and those missed free throws loom big over this game. As for the missed field goals, some were poor forced shots, some were great defense by Auburn, and the rest just weren't falling.
• Fred Van Vleet (AUB): 32 pts. All I can say about this kid is, "Wow." The future Wichita State point guard had to step up with Auburn's main big man Jaylin Marshall out with a knee injury. And boy, did he ever. He was able to attack the basket with authority and get to the line (where he was 13-16), and he also hit a couple key 3's in the 4th quarter to put Elgin away. And then for good measure, he assisted LaMark Foote for a beautiful alley-oop dunk with about 30 seconds left that put the exclamation point on the win.
• Kory Brown (ELG): 20 pts. Brown singlehandedly kept the Maroons in the game. He struggled a bit from the line early in the first half (6-9), but attacked the basket in the 2nd half and got some big layups. Amazingly, he played probably about 14 minutes with 4 fouls, somehow avoiding fouling out when there were a couple occasions he could have been called for his 5th, only to have the foul called on a teammate. You have to feel bad for the senior, but he played his heart out in his final high school game.

Final Thoughts
This was a great game in front of a packed house in Carpentersville, IL, someplace I had never been before (and honestly got lost a little bit on my way up... thank God for GPS devices). Both student sections came out in full force, but the A-Team (Auburn's student section) brought their A-game to help Auburn get over the hump. Interestingly enough, security and police had to get involved with fans a couple times and escort them out of the gym (I think one Elgin fan went to confront the A-Team during halftime and had to be forced out of the gym... c'mon, man.)


In what may very well have been my last radio broadcasted game for a while, I got a great game, and had a phenomenal team to work with. Many thanks to Dave Schmidt and Tom Warner, two radio veterans who were called upon with the main guys down in Peoria for being great broadcasters for a great game, and for being two of the nicest guys you will ever meet. I also have to thank WROK Program Director Scot Bertram for giving me the opportunity to put on a headset one more time.