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Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Bettis family practices togetherness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit - The old house is tucked in the middle of a block on this city’s rugged west side, and when you’re standing at the front of the brick structure with the triangular look near the roof, it has the feel of a rural church. This was the loving home where the gospel according to Johnnie and Gladys Bettis was preached to their three children, including the eventually famous Jerome of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As for Jerome’s siblings, they’re not so famous, but they joined Jerome in living their parents’ commandments:
Thou shalt work hard.
Thou shalt support the activities of everybody in the family.
Thou shalt bowl.
You have Kimberly, 39, a student who works for a local staffing company. You also have John, 37, a mortgage banker in nearby Troy who sauntered over to a telephone pole at the curb facing the old house that has been abandoned and crumbling for 13 years. He stopped to motion from that pole to another one a few yards away. “We used to play football between both of these poles,” said John, before losing the joy in his face after he glanced back to what remains of the old house. “It’s an eyesore, and you almost hate to see it still standing back there,” he added. “My parents, my sister, all of us, we’re in a different part of the city now, and I try not to come down this way anymore. Jerome doesn’t come here at all.”
That is, when Jerome makes one of his many trips to Detroit between relaxing at his home in Pittsburgh during the season and his one in Lawrenceville afterward with his fiance from Atlanta.
Speaking of Atlanta, John attended Clark Atlanta University. He shook his head as we walked around the old neighborhood, now dominated by stray cats, blowing garbage and drug dealers. “It was on the edge of turning like this when we left in 1993 after Jerome used money from his first contract with the Los Angeles Rams to buy my parents the house that they have now,” John said. “But at the time when we still were living around here, we were almost sheltered from it all.”
We’re back to that gospel according to Johnnie and Gladys. Courtesy of frequent and mandatory nights at the bowling alley for the whole family, the kids stayed out of mischief. Jerome laughed when I mentioned as much this week, because he recalled how he still caught the wrath of his father. It had much to do with John.
“He’s my big brother, and he’s always been there for me, but when I was coming up, he was leading me, but sometimes it was in the wrong direction,” said Jerome, laughing some more about John who is four years older. “He made me get a lot of whippings, because I followed him. I learned at an early age to listen to what he says, but that I shouldn’t necessarily do what he says.”
In case you’re wondering, John never was a prolific athlete, and he is Jerome’s “big” brother only in age. For one, Jerome is 5-foot-11 and 255 of the thickest pounds that you’ll ever see. He was known as “The Bus” even before he used his powerful legs to push the Steelers into Super Bowl XL for his homecoming that has netted Jerome the key to the city and the retirement of his high school jersey. They’ll play the Seattle Seahawks at Ford Field, located a kickoff or three from the old house.
Anyway, John is so much shorter and lighter than Jerome that you might refer to John as “The Van.” Which would be appropriate. Consider that Johnnie and Gladys never have missed any of Jerome’s football games, and that spans from his all-everything career at Mackenzie High School through his 13 seasons in the pros along the way eventually to the Hall of Fame. In between, John drove his parents and his sister in his aunt’s van 3 1/2 hours each way to South Bend, Ind., to all of Jerome’s home games at the University of Notre Dame. John also was the chauffeur for away games that didn’t involve air travel.
This was long before John used his privilege as Jerome’s older brother to destroy the little guy in pickup games between those telephone poles. “Wherever I went, my mother would always say, ‘Take your brother,’ and if we didn’t let him play, she would take the football from us,” John said. Then he chuckled, while pointing to a spot near the telephone pole at the front of the old house. “It was right here, when he was 12 years old. That’s when I knew he was rising to a different level.”
With more pointing, John said emphatically, “Right here, that’s where he turned around and ran me over. I was the last guy between him and a touchdown. He knocked me over and scored, and you know the rest of the story.”
Moments later, a middle-aged man staggered toward the familiar face that belonged to John. “You need to tell your brother that he should come around here so we can see him more,” said the man, still staggering, with John giving the definitive response: He eased into a smile, and then he gave no response.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Jackets again lack ‘wow’ factor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Given the dart throwing and somewhat demented backdrop in the world of college football recruiting, there are a few comforting things about national letter-of-intent day at Georgia Tech.
Sweat over the school “rankings� on SuperGeek.Com? Never. With the Yellow Jackets, you relax because you already know the Yellow Jackets will rank behind almost everybody, as well as Hargrave Military Academy.
Tech will never have one of the top recruiting classes in the United States. Or the South. Or the state. As institutes inside I-285 go, they kick butt.
So it wasn’t surprising Wednesday when the Jackets’ sanction-shrunk classette of 15 was ranked by some “experts� as the 11th best in the ACC. Mom used to say 11th place isn’t so bad. Except when there are only 12 teams. (Thank you, Wake Forest.) The good news was, Tech’s recruiting class ranked ahead of those of UTEP, all three insignificant Louisianas (Tech, Monroe, Lafayette), Toledo, Hawaii, Buffalo, Colgate, Crest and Pepsodent.
Some, like those who buy tickets at Tech, still struggle with these small victories. Others, like coach Chan Gailey, who doesn’t pay for his tickets, fail to see the problem.
“I never have worried since I’ve been here about rankings and [rating] stars and things like that,� Gailey said Wednesday. “We just go out and try to find the best guys that fit our program. I don’t worry about what I tell fans, to be honest with you. The only thing anybody worries about is what you do on Thursdays and Saturdays during the season. [Signing day] creates a lot of excitement. But the bottom line is how we do in the fall.�
He is right about that. Recruiting is slightly less scientific than the Viva challenge. As Steve Spurrier so adroitly pointed out, it didn’t matter that Georgia had better recruiting classes than Florida because the players evolved in opposite directions after arriving on campus.
Problem is, these are special circumstances at Tech. People are looking for something to cheer about. NCAA probation and resulting sanctions cut Tech’s signing class by six players. Gailey’s contract was extended to five years at a time when he wasn’t exactly riding a wave of popularity. A season that started 3-0 and included an upset at Miami nonetheless ended with a familiar fizzle: a loss to Georgia, a dismal performance in a no-name bowl (38-10 to Utah in the Emerald) and a 7-5 record (again).
If you were hoping for whoop-de-doos Wednesday, it didn’t happen. Blame academics.Blame the status of the program or Gailey or sanctions or moon phases, anything you want. They seldom get Parade All-Americans on The Flats. As a rule, they get good kids who can play a little and never were pursued by Texas.
The Calvin Johnson wow factor is rare even in normal circumstances. You can imagine what the odds were this winter. Of course, Gailey would never say anything to suggest recruiting has become more of a chore. Having fewer scholarships hurts, yes, but as to the shadow cast by probation, he said: “I don’t think it hurt us otherwise.�
Tech’s commitment to Gailey was timed to put recruits at ease. Cynics might suggest it led some to cross the Jackets off their list. Suffice it to say, the coach believes the former: “I think it gave them a sense of stability in the program.�
It’s all relative. Georgia’s class is ranked in the top five in the nation. Tech’s is 11th in the ACC. If Tech is stable, what’s Georgia? The flip side is that Gailey has managed to win seven games every year. If we’re going to bash him for low-profile recruits, he must be doing something right just to get to any bowl game.
Signing day comes down to this for Tech fans: Expect little, then hope everybody else was wrong.
Permalink | Comments (69) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Richt’s ultimate goal not far away
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — Mark Richt has done almost everything he set out to do. He has won the SEC (twice). He has taken Georgia to BCS bowls (two of them). He has owned Tech and beaten Tennessee (four times) and Auburn (twice) and even Florida (just once, but hey). He has won 10 or more games in each of the past four seasons, and he has made the Bulldogs a top-10 fixture and he has aced every signing day, and now there’s but one thing left to do.
“You’re talking about winning the national championship,� Richt said Wednesday, taking the hint. Or just playing for one. How far is Georgia from doing that?
Not far at all.
“I believe any given year it can happen,� Richt said. “In 2002, even if we had won every game, it might not have happened. [Georgia finished 13-1, while unbeatens Ohio State and Miami met for the BCS title.] But Ohio State was like us, winning every game close, so we might have made it. And even last year, we’re close — a four-point loss [to Florida], a one-point loss [to Auburn], a three-point loss [to West Virginia]. How many points is that?�
Eleven points from being unbeaten, and still Georgia wouldn’t have made the Rose Bowl ahead of Texas or Southern Cal. Often a national championship is a function of timing. A year after Georgia finished ranked No. 3 with its one loss, once-beaten LSU played for (and won) the BCS crown. The year after that, unbeaten Auburn didn’t get a sniff of the title game.
The point being: You can’t target your exact date of arrival. You can only keep putting yourself in position. Toward that end, Georgia rounded up its most heralded class of recruits under Richt on Wednesday, and the biggest name among them — quarterback Matthew Stafford of Dallas — made it clear he hadn’t signed with Georgia and enrolled in school early with the aim of playing for third place in the SEC East.
“We’re not far [from a national championship] at all,â€? Stafford said. “We’re beating on the door… We’ve got as good a chance as anybody.â€?
All coaches hype their recruiting classes. (When last did you hear any school proclaim, “Frankly, none of these guys can play deadâ€??) True to his low-key nature, Richt hypes less than most. But this latest bunch inspired him to come near gushing: “This class right here could really do some special things. … We ought to be special three or four years down the road.â€?
It might not take that long. Stafford could start as a true freshman, and a handful of these guys — Asher Allen, Reshad Jones, Knowshon Moreno, NaDerris Ward, Tony Wilson — shouldn’t be far behind. Having cherry-picked in-state talent the past few years, Georgia went wide this time. And that’s another sign of growth.
“It excites us that national blue-chip players are interested in us,� Richt said. “There were certain guys we signed or got visits from that we wouldn’t have five years ago.�
Mark Richt arrived here in January 2001 with the intention of modeling his new home after his old one, and he has. Georgia in the new millennium has come to resemble the Florida State of the late ’80s and early ’90s. But it took Bobby Bowden a run of Wide Right near-misses finally to break through in 1993, and that year the Seminoles needed a bit of providence — a week after FSU lost to Notre Dame, the Irish were upset by Boston College — to finish the drill.
“We thought we could do it a lot of those years,â€? Richt said. “We think that here. … I don’t think we’re too far away.â€?
With a new quarterback, next season might not be that season, but 2007 could be, or 2008 or 2009. It took the master recruiter Mack Brown eight years to claim a title for Texas, and Mark Richt seems on a similarly slow-burning fast track. There’s only one thing left for him to do, and he’ll do it soon.
Permalink | Comments (55) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Goodbye, Super Bore Week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit –- It’s early Wednesday morning. Maybe they’re just lulling us to sleep. Surely something will happen to wake up this snoozer of a Super Bowl Week before the game on Sunday.
So far, nothing. No inflammatory quotes on guaranteeing victories or quarterbacks mooning passing helicopters or John Matuszak clones terrorizing local bars in the middle of the night.
The epitome of it all is Joey Porter, the usually gregarious linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who suddenly is choosing his words very carefully. “The bigger story is what (I’m) going to say next,� Porter told reporters. “That’s the only reason why I have people waiting for me right now. They feel like their going to tug and tug and tug until he breaks. But it’s not going to happen.�
Nothing is happening, even beyond Porter’s quiet lips. Even the usually wacky Media Day on Tuesday was a relatively subdued affair. The most interesting thing to occur so far was when a van carrying the Seahawks to a press conference was damaged by a descending gate.
Just wait, though.
What’s that? Porter’s lips are suddenly moving –- and rapidly?
Soon after Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens sort of guaranteed a Seahawks victory later on Wednesday, Porter jumped out of hibernation. “I’ve been asleep all week, but now I got woke up,� Porter said. “I’ve got my first taste of blood, and now I’m thirsty for more. Until now, It was ‘Watch what I say,’ ‘I can’t say this,’ ‘I can’t say that,’ ‘Don’t do anything silly,’ but I’m ready now.
“You look for the guys that say something that aren’t supposed to say nothing, and I feel like he definitely was out of pocket to say what he said. I’m going to make sure he owns up to those words.�
Now we’re talking, and it’s just the middle of the week. Remember? It wasn’t until the wee morning hours on the day of the Falcons’ trip to the Super Bowl in 1999 that Eugene Robinson visited that little street corner in Miami.
This could get interesting.
Finally.
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
