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Friday, January 6, 2006
Quiet Hossa enjoying anonymity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
A Slovakian hockey star in Atlanta by way of Ottawa doesn’t quite carry the same level of recognition around here as, say, a left tackle from Auburn.
But that level of anonymity has served Marian Hossa well. He ranks eighth in the NHL in scoring but could scream his name in the Five Points MARTA station and people would just look at him like, well, like anybody else screaming their name in the Five Points MARTA station.
“In some ways I like that because I have more privacy in my life,” the Thrashers’ right winger said Friday. “I can walk anywhere and nobody knows me. Basically, I can go shopping and don’t even think about it.”
Think about this: On a night when the Thrashers dumped Pittsburgh, 6-4, Hossa quietly –- truth is, he really doesn’t scream -– contributed another goal and two assists. It gives him 10 points in the last four games, 16 in the last nine and 52 on the season.
While the Thrashers -– 9-2-3 in the last 14 games -– have evolved into a playoff contender, Hossa has at least reaffirmed his identity inside the arena. When he scored two goals in the Dany Heatley Returns Game, Atlanta fans actually chanted his name. Name chanting generally has not been a common occurrence in Thrashers history, unless followed by a biting adjective.
The chant was audible again in the second period Friday night when Hossa drove to the net with the puck on a power play and slipped the puck past Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to give the Thrashers a 4-0 lead.
“It’s nice to hear that,” Hossa said of the chant. “The fans are getting excited. This feels more like home now.”
Few superstars have ever changed employers in more awkward circumstances. Hossa is one of the top 10 players in the game, but his price tag grew out of Ottawa’s reach, circumstances that intersected with Heatley’s stunning trade request. Strange as it may sound, the atmosphere that led to Heatley being booed in Monday’s 8-3 Thrashers’ win over the Senators probably fed to Hossa’s popularity.
Hossa was taken aback when he heard his name Monday, but coach Bob Hartley said, “It meant a lot to him. Obviously, we’re making a push for the playoffs, but so is the city. The fans are starting to believe in us, and they sent a clear message to Hoss. It was his formal welcome to Atlanta.”
Hossa is that rare combination of speed, size, discipline and intelligence. “With the new rules, nobody can catch him,” said Ilya Kovalchuk, who had a hat trick Friday.
Suffice it to say, he also carries himself a little quieter than Kovalchuk, who after his second goal Friday taunted/pointed at Pittsburgh rookie Sidney Crosby in the penalty box. Hossa won’t even point out himself, much less an opponent.
“A coach’s dream,” Hartley said.
He leads the team’s forwards in ice time. Of his 22 goals, 10 have come on the power play and four short-handed (which already doubles the previous franchise record).
Hard to imagine, but there was a transition period after the trade. Hossa said it was, “hard for me because it was a new team, a new system, and the team was struggling.”
Player and team are doing fine now. Hossa has even managed to work in some sightseeing.
“My girlfriend and I see went to see Coca Cola museum and the new aquarium,” he said. “But Atlanta is not like a European city. It’s not like an old city where you go see an old castle or old buildings.”
When told one reason for that is the city was burned down by Sherman in the Civil War, Hossa said: “Really? I didn’t know that? You learn something new every day. Very nice.”
A few more months and he’ll know the faces on Stone Mountain. And maybe somebody will recognize his face.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
BCS enjoys ‘grand crescendo’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
There it was, staring you in the face, two Southern California players smiling at you beatifically from the cover of Sports Illustrated. “The best in college football,” read the pronouncement accompanying the good-buddy portrait of Reggie Bush, Heisman Trophy incumbent, and the Trojan he followed, Matt Leinart.
Do you believe in omens? If you do, here was one dead on the nose. Someone on our staff once did some research into the deadliness of the SI cover jinx awhile back, and it would astound you how often it bedevils favorites. This issue came out with crucial timing, the week before the Rose Bowl game, setting up Southern Cal for the perfect kill. By this time, every minute detail of how Vince Young took the Texas team by the Longhorns and showed them to the end zone has been etched in history. (I’m still wondering what those Trojans were thinking, standing around gawking while he ran in the winning touchdown.)
“Perhaps the greatest college football team in history,” you’ve read, I’m sure. The one-two Heisman Trophy finishers against the Texan who finished third. Texas against a team that scorched Oklahoma in the BCS Championship game a year ago. The odds were too great to ignore — until SI hit the street with the cover that often turns a leadpipe cinch into lead.
It never struck a more direct hit than on the Rose Bowl, presaging the crash of the Trojans and the rise of the Bovines of Texas.
Well, so much for that. What effect does a magazine cover have on a football game? You begin to wonder if it isn’t more than locker room trash. Yet, there was something beyond the mystic here. Vince Young was far above the average quarterback, playing like a man possessed, or at least one furious at coming in third in the Heisman polling stations.
Such a game leads to exaggerated emotions. I don’t know how many games I may have seen that I thought was “the greatest.” Usually, I’ve been there. This one I took by television, suffering from the winter sniffles, poised on the edge of my chair, and I can say this, that if there ever has been a greater one, I never saw it, and I’ve been watching college football games since 1934. (I might say here, that the first one I saw was a scoreless tie.)
It was a grand crescendo for the Bowl Championship Series and its protagonists and a solid blow to the chops of those of a playoff mentality. It was the last act of a series that began Dec. 20 with the New Orleans Bowl (played in Lafayette), and through delicate television scheduling by ESPN, worked its way into the major networks and kept us all up until ungodly hours. Some of the games were plagued by missed field goals and extra points, sloppy officiating and gross misconduct that demands that bowl officials turn their vision off the dollar and onto the kind of sordid impression players are leaving on the public.
(Viz.: Marcus Vick of Virginia Tech troding on a prone Louisville player; and the brawl between the LSU and Miami players after the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. And there were more, but I didn’t take names.)
It was a delightful way to take the bowls, though I had no choice, coughing, snorting and barking like a seal through it all. My favorite winner was Navy’s upset over Colorado State, being passionately attached to our armed forces. My suggestion to Georgia Tech: Before accepting another invitation west of the Mississippi, especially one named for a bag of nuts, stay home. Cheers to Alabama, which showed what devout defense can do to a Texas Tech team that averaged 42 points a game. What confounded you about Georgia was, how could this team founded on defense open a game spotting West Virginia four touchdowns?
I’ll conclude with this: All of the critics of this congestion of bowl games may as well turn on the tube, sit back and enjoy the feast. After this rousing series and the $194-million payoff from top to bottom, they’re here to stay.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Jimmy The Greek was right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Exactly 18 years ago to the month, the late Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder had the audacity to utter in public what many thought in private. And, no, I’m not talking about his theory that blacks evolved into great athletes because they were “bred to be that way” from slavery. I’m talking about the more striking thing that the former CBS sports commentator said back then that mostly was buried.
To quote what Snyder told a Washington, D.C., television station on why he thought teams weren’t hiring blacks as coaches: “There’s not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean, all the players are black. The only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs.”
Uh-oh. The top two finishers for NFL Coach of the Year weren’t the shade of Bill Belichick. While Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the balloting released Saturday, Marvin Lewis was among only four other coaches to receive votes. That means half of the black head coaches in the league are among the elite. That also means that Jimmy The Greek revealed one of society’s dirty little secrets: It isn’t that a slew of those among the majority believe that a slew of those among the minority can’t do a particular job. It’s more that a slew of those among the majority is afraid that a slew of those among the minority can do a particular job.
“I won’t speak for everybody, but I’m not sure that [Snyder] overspoke this particular situation,” said Ron Wolf, 66, the legendary executive who built the Green Bay powerhouse of Brett Favre and was Al Davis’ top aide during the glory decades of the Oakland Raiders. “I know that people always are afraid about their own territory. It doesn’t matter where you are or what line of business you’re in. I’m reading a heckuva book right now about Baltimore police called ‘Homicide,’ and it talks about territory there. People are always afraid of losing their territory.”
See the NFL, where there were eight openings and counting for head coaching jobs after the regular season ended last weekend. Despite the overwhelming success of Dungy, Smith and Lewis, along with Romeo Crennel spending his first year in Cleveland taking the dreadful Browns to two more victories than they had the season before, few, if any, of those job openings will go to blacks.
We’re back to Jimmy The Greek, fear and the epitome of it all: Art Shell.
Nothing is more mystifying in the history of sports than why this classy guy from South Carolina never got a second chance as an NFL head coach. Shell is the Hall of Fame offensive tackle who spent six years running the same Raiders that he helped make famous during the 1970s. As the NFL’s first black head coach in modern times, his teams went 56-41 along the way to three playoff appearances that included a trip to the AFC championship game. He had only one losing season, but he was fired without explanation by Davis after finishing a respectable 9-7 in 1994.
Since then, those of lesser stature than Shell have come and gone and come again as NFL head coaches. Dom Capers. Dave Wannstedt. Dennis Erickson. Bruce Coslet. Rich Kotite. Joe Bugel. Norv Turner. In contrast, all Shell could do after his ouster from the Raiders was work as an assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs and the Falcons before taking an executive job in the league offices. Davis even admits that the worst decision of his football life was firing Shell.
Even so, George Halas has more of a chance to become an NFL head coach again than Shell, and Halas has been dead for 23 years. “Earlier on, I know that Art had a lot of interviews, even before that rule was in effect,” said Wolf, referring to the Rooney Rule, which began to require in 2002 that NFL teams interview at least one minority candidate. “As we all know, none of it came to fruition for Art.”
Wolf paused over the phone from his winter home in Jupiter, Fla., before adding with a sigh, “Wow, I don’t know why Art can’t get hired, but I do know that the whole framework changed in 1996 when [expansion teams] Jacksonville and Carolina went to the playoff game for the right to go to the Super Bowl. From that point on, five-year plans were done.
“Now it’s about two-year plans, and if you don’t win, you’re done, and somebody else is coming in. It’s who can help you get there the quickest, and I don’t think ethnicity has anything to do with it.”
The ghost of Jimmy The Greek would say otherwise. So would this: If we don’t see an epidemic of NFL teams hiring black head coaches this winter — despite all of those openings, despite Dungy, Smith, Lewis and Crennel, despite everything.
Permalink | Comments (76) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
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