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Friday, February 22, 2008
What’s it like to be Vince Dooley?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Now Vince Dooley has a whole section of Georgia’s campus named in his honor, and a fancy statue is on the way. Then again, he has been a football coach, an athletics director, a state icon and often all of those things at once during much of the past 44 years for barkers in the Bulldog Nation from Athens to Rome to Valdosta.
Which begs the question: What is it like to be Vincent J. Dooley as an overwhelming figure to many?
I mean, how does it feel?
“I’m recognizable. I’ve come to that conclusion, at least in the state, so I don’t get surprised at it,” said Dooley, 75, pausing, before easing into a chuckle when contemplating whether he has become bigger than life. “I’m always aware that not everybody feels that way. Some people feel very strongly and passionately for me, which I appreciate. But I also realize that other people don’t feel that way.”
No question there. Some view Dooley’s legend as just a creation of a guy named Herschel. In fact, if you subtract those years with Mr. Walker from Dooley’s life, you have a coach with no national championship and a bunch of seven-victory seasons against few opponents worth mentioning outside of the SEC. There also is Dooley’s frosty relationship with Michael Adams. Let’s just say the Georgia president would prefer dining with Uga VI than the former AD that he forced to retire early.
Speaking of Uga VI, when compared to their fawning counterparts, most of the Vince Dooley haters in the state could squeeze into the doghouse of that Georgia mascot. “I probably see it more than he does,” said Barbara Dooley, referring to the masses that have elevated her husband into a little god since he arrived to coach the Bulldogs in 1963. Added the loving and vocal wife, “I get tickled when they are in his presence. It’s just different.”
So different that Vince Dooley says he doesn’t pay attention to it all. “I guess what I have done is come to grow into [the role of Georgia legend] and to accept it over a period of time, and I really don’t think much of it,” Dooley said. “Then if I ever feel like your head might be swelling, I always say a prayer of humility to remind myself who I am, and that settles it.”
This isn’t to say Dooley is oblivious to the eternal gawkers around him, especially with his recognizable profile and the coming of that statue that will sit at the corner of South Lumpkin Street and Pinecrest Drive. It’s an area that has many of Georgia’s athletic facilities, and after getting approved this month by Georgia’s Board of Regents, the area will be called “Vince Dooley Athletic Complex.”
Just like that, the visitors around Dooley will grow even more from a crowd to a friendly mob during just a stop to a Chick-fil-A in the state. He will spend even more time talking than sleeping on flights to and from Atlanta during his many travels courtesy of those wishing to shake his hand, hear his stories or tell him theirs.
Dooley laughed, saying, “Some people look at me, and they’re not really sure who I am. Or some people who haven’t seen me will say, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere.’ Some are more outwardly expressive than others by just calling my name out. Some kind of just look and then blurt out, ‘What is your name?’ Some won’t say anything, but you kind of feel that they’re maybe thinking who I might be. I’ve gotten used to it. But most all of them are very nice.”
So what about Dooley? Who causes his eyes to widen as much as many of those who saunter into his world?
Actually, the answer is that person who joins Dooley as the two biggest sports legends in the history of the state.
Hank Aaron.
“It was kind of a special thrill meeting him, and I guess you can say, ‘awe,’ because we’re both from Mobile,” Dooley said. “I used to always say that we both were from the wrong side of the tracks, because we both grew up with very, very modest means. But we were on different sides of tracks because of segregation back then. To follow his career and then to finally sit down and have dinner with Hank was a thrill.”
Dooley sighed, adding softly, “So, you know, if some people feel that way about me, I can understand how they feel.”
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Hard to feel too sorry for Joe Louis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
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Look, nobody sends Valentine cards to the IRS — as in Internal Revenue Service. No contest, America’s No. l Favorite Enemy. But to blame this federal agency for the financial woes of Joe Louis, the great heavyweight, is sort of piling it on. It’s the popular way to go, for who’s going to make any defense for the IRS? Such is the theme of “Joe Louis: America’s Hero … Betrayed,” an HBO production given a preview in Atlanta this week.
Betrayal? I’m not positive that’s the proper term, in terms of the IRS. Yes, he was betrayed, but first by the various characters “in his corner,” so to speak. Jimmy Cannon, the columnist who first wrote of Louis, “He was a credit to his race — the human race,” also wrote that before the IRS ever got him, the bloodsuckers in his corner, the guys manipulating the books, split him up.
“He made four million dollars [in his ring career] but this was cut up many ways,” Cannon wrote.
You know what four million bucks looked like in those days? It was a king’s fortune, and yes, much of it never reached the champion’s pocket. I read this thing several years later, after Louis had defended his title against Billy Conn, and won twice, the two of them sat at a table in Las Vegas, both broke, both working as greeters at casinos on the Strip. The owner handed a stooge $300, told him to bet it for Joe, and when the stooge came back with a fistful of cash, the owner said, “Don’t let him near a table again.”
In my eyes, Joe Louis brought a fresh degree of popularity to the black athlete. No rip-rap, hip-hop and gangsta trash infected his life. He arose from Alabama poverty, did his stretch in World War II, fought Abe Simon and George Nicholson for the Army and Navy Relief Funds, and kept fighting on, mainly exhibitions, for spending money. But the more he made, the more he made for the IRS. They never let up, and that it is brutal, but that’s the USA. You earn it, you pay taxes.
Boxers have become virtually extinct in the order of sports prominence. Louis, though, represented another level, an American hero. A genuinely warm and likable fellow well met. Strange as it may seem, he had a warm friendship with Max Schmeling, the German heavyweight to whom he lost, then decked in the first round of the rematch. When Las Vegas staged a star-spangled event honoring Louis, Schmeling flew in from Germany to appear with him. And another time. They held a deep admiration for each other. When Louis died in 1981, through the influence of President Reagan, a place was made for him in Arlington National Cemetery, one of the most moving services I’ve ever attended. Supreme Court justices, congressmen, old sports stars wearing team jackets, entertainers, Frank Sinatra for one, came to the chapel. Joe Louis resting there among generals, admirals, leaders of men and winners of wars.
One of Louis’ other hazards to his bank account was the golf course. So often pride influences a serious player to assume a handicap that he can’t play to. Louis was not immune. It is written that Bill Spiller, the first black professional of note, once took him for $20,000. He played in several PGA pro-ams on the West Coast, as an amateur, while black pros were shunted aside.
Muhammad Ali sometimes took vocal jabs at this man he should have been applauding, instead leering and calling him an “Uncle Tom” in some of his degrading ragings. But as time passed, as Ali aged and came to his senses, he once whispered in Louis’ ear, “You are really the greatest.”
A stroke of irony is that Joe Louis’ most prominent legacy to sport of the day is centered in golf. He was born Joe Louis Barrow, and today Joe Louis Barrow Jr., an attorney in Denver, is president of the First Tee foundation. “My father gave a greater sense of hope for black Americans in the military beyond what he did in the ring,” he said, and First Tee is aimed at paving a path in golf for young Americans, black and white.
Joe Louis Barrow Jr. takes great pride in the father he came to know in his teens. “My parents were divorced when I was a child,” he said. “I’m tremendously proud of my father, and the sense of hope he gave black Americans.”
An American hero, beyond a doubt. But don’t blame all his travails on the IRS, not one of America’s favorite sets of initials.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Furman Bisher
College basketball insider
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Every Friday between now and the end of the regular season, we’ll look at who’s up, who’s down and what you should be watching as the season gets closer to the NCAA tournament and the Final Four.
THE TOP SEEDS
If the season ended today, here’s what the top four seeds in each region should look like:
EAST REGIONAL
1. North Carolina
2. Georgetown
3. Stanford
4. Butler
SOUTH REGIONAL
1. Tennessee
2. Duke
3. Xavier
4. Louisville
MIDWEST REGIONAL
1. Memphis
2. Texas
3. Wisconsin
4. Wash. State
WEST REGIONAL
1. Kansas
2. UCLA
3. Connecticut
4. Vanderbilt
RISING Louisville Louisville has won six in a row and eight of nine to climb into a first-place tie atop the Big East. The Cardinals have beaten Marquette, Georgetown and Syracuse — heady accomplishments for a team that lost to Seton Hall last month. It gets harder from here: Louisville plays at Pitt on Sunday and then must face Notre Dame, Villanova and Georgetown. The latter game, to be staged in D.C., could decide the conference title.
FALLING Oregon An Elite Eight team last season, Oregon is in real danger of not making the field of 65. The smallish Ducks are 15-11 and 6-8 in the loaded Pac-10, and they’ve lost seven of 10. Ernie Kent has called his team one of the nation’s best offensive units, but Oregon managed only 43 points in losing at Stanford two weeks ago. The Ducks fell to USC on Thursday and play UCLA at Pauley Pavilion today. Yikes.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING No. 2 TENNESSEE at No. 1 MEMPHIS 9 p.m. today • ESPN It’s the 38th time No. 1 has played No. 2. The No. 1 team has won 21 times. It’s the fifth time teams from the same state have met when ranked Nos. 1 and 2 — North Carolina and Duke have done it twice, and Cincinnati and Ohio State did it in consecutive NCAA finals — and each time the lower-ranked team won. But not since 1990, when Missouri won at Kansas, has the No. 2 team won on No. 1’s floor.
MID-MAJOR OF THE WEEK Saint Mary’s (23-3) The Gaels drew notice in November when they beat Oregon, which seemed like a bigger deal at the time. They are tied atop the West Coast Conference with — who else? — Gonzaga, and they’ve already beaten the Bulldogs head-to-head. The teams play again on March 1, but such is the cachet now afforded Gonzaga and its formerly modest league that the WCC will probably send two teams to the Big Dance.
FUN WITH NUMBERS Memphis began the week ranked 328th among 328 Division I schools — i.e., dead solid last — in free-throw shooting. The Tigers have made just 58.8 percent of their foul shots. (Or, put another way, they’ve missed 41.2 percent.) They’ve gotten away with it so far, but it’s hard to imagine a team that can’t hit unguarded 15-footers winning six games over three weekends in the crucible of the NCAA tournament.
THE NAME TO KNOW Tyler Smith, Tennessee Not to be confused with teammates Ramar Smith and JaJuan Smith, Tyler will be the best all-around player on the floor tonight. The Iowa transfer leads the Vols in rebounding and assists, a parlay not often seen in a forward, and is third in scoring. Chris Lofton remains the nation’s best contested shooter, but T. Smith is the reason the Vols have risen to No. 2. “He’s a tremendous player,” says Georgia coach Dennis Felton.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Fixing Falcons not as easy as heads or tails
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Given all the missteps the Falcons organization has made the past few years, it seemed strange that the first major decision facing the team’s new architect was whether to call heads or tails. (For this, Arthur Blank had to go through a search process?)
Amazingly, Thomas Dimitroff guessed right Friday. He called tails. Tails came up. Brilliant! The rest should be easy. Draft the right guys. Sign the right guys. Cut the right guys. Alter the course of history for a franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs in three years and has never had consecutive winning seasons.
Should be easy. Just keep flipping coins.
“Two weeks ago, I said, ‘It’s a done deal — tails,’ ” the Falcons’ general manager said by phone from Indianapolis. “Then [Thursday] night at dinner, I was sitting there with Mr. Blank and [coach] Mike Smith, and they said, ‘What’s the call?’ and I said, ‘Tails.’ But I thought I was actually supposed to flip the coin. So I went back to the room, and I was practicing flipping things. Sugar packs. Tea bags. Hotel room key cards. Anything.”
As long as Dimitroff doesn’t start testing schemes on an electronic vibrating football game, he should be fine.
The fact is, nothing can be left to chance. The Falcons can’t afford a lot of mistakes. The next two months will be the most important period of Dimitroff’s tenure, regardless of how long that tenure ends up being. This is when blueprint, structure and direction are set. These, sorry to say, are not coin-flip decisions.
“This is a very significant time for us,” he said. “This is when you start sending the right messages, not just to people in the organization, but to the support staff, personnel staff and most importantly to the players. You’re telling everybody, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ The tone and the culture are established here. You can’t be flippant. The decisions can’t be emotionally driven.”
No. Let’s leave that to DeAngelo Hall.
It’s unfortunate when an athlete’s talent comes with so little forethought or leadership. Hall, despite having a pretty good season amid the Falcons’ collapse last year, flashed his shortcomings often last season. He said the wrong things at the wrong time instead of doing what a veteran should do to hold a fractured team together. When others talked about ways to turn things around, Hall asked for a new contract. Often. Loudly. Obnoxiously.
Hall’s impeccable timing continued Friday. On the same day of a rare Falcons highlight, he was a walking, talking blast furnace, telling reporters to forget about a new contract — he just wanted out.
No need to flip a coin on this one. Hall likely was going to be dropkicked to the highest bidder anyway. This merely will add to the trajectory. The Falcons need to start over. If next year’s team ends up being young and hungry but fairly average, the last thing you want as a general manager or coach is to have a blowhard cornerback whining about his contract leading the charge, no matter how good he is.
This team suddenly is in the best of situations. If Dimitroff acquires a first-round pick for Hall as expected, the Falcons will have four selections in the first two rounds, pending other deals. With their first pick, there is a pretty good chance they will be staring at defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, running back Darren McFadden or both. (Forget quarterback Matt Ryan. Remember where Dimitroff came from: New England, which took a future Hall of Fame QB with the 199th pick.)
Dimitroff also knows there are advantages to trading down to accumulate more picks. “If you look at my past in New England, I’m preconditioned to certain things, and I realize that trading down for added commodities is an effective way to build a roster,” he said. “If there’s not a player there at three we really like, I would definitely consider it.”
Now he starts playing the game. He’ll have conversations with other GMs. He’ll express interest in one player while preferring another. He’ll be coy in the media. It’s that time of year.
Does he see a clear definition among the top three players?
“No, not yet. But I will.” (Pause) “That’s where I’m going to be a little evasive,” he said with a laugh.
Does he have a philosophy on what type of player or position should be drafted early?
“Yes. But I don’t want to play that hand yet.”
He’s learning. He knows. He has to be careful. The man was practicing flipping sugar packets in a hotel room. How much room for error do you think he has?
Permalink | Comments (91) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Tech’s ultra-successful program that no one cares about
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It is what it is. After all, you really would have to be a helluva engineer to know the answer to this question: Tell me the guy in the state of Georgia who was named coach of the year on a national level, another time for his team’s deeds within its district and fives other times regarding his various teams during conference play?
Here’s another hint: We’re talking about somebody who coaches a team that made 12 postseason appearances during his 14 previous years in charge, and that team has reached the ultimate playoff series in its sport thrice.
You’re wrong. It’s Danny Hall, the baseball coach at Georgia Tech, where nothing changed on Friday at Russ Chandler Stadium regarding his yearly mission during the start of his 15th season with the Yellow Jackets. In fact, Hall repeated what he said six years ago with a straight face after Tech officials spent $9 million on a new ballpark,
“They aren’t spending all of that money for us to get beat.”
Yes, courtesy of ACC expansion and enhanced programs in general, the conference isn’t Tech, Florida State and everybody else anymore. Yes, it’s tougher for Hall to predict the composition of his team each season since many of his freshmen recruits are drafted out of high school and a slew of his juniors bolt for the pros. Yes, Tech averaged nine players drafted after each of the past three years, and Hall now has a young squad with maybe six future big-leaguers.
“I mean, it is harder, but from my standpoint, my expectations don’t change,” said Hall before his Jackets’ season opener against Youngstown State. “I said it when I first came here, and that is, we want to win a national championship. We’ve had three opportunities of going to the College World Series, and we got beat in my first year here in the national championship game. But that is always going to be the goal.”
Too bad nobody cares.
Then again, when compared to All Mighty Football and a basketball program on campus that can generate more than a few pennies with a deep run into March Madness, nobody cares about college baseball that much anywhere.
Well, Tech officials do. There has been spoken and physical support through the years for Hall and Tech baseball from athletics directors Homer Rice, Dave Braine and now Dan Radakovich. “We also have received great support from [Tech president Wayne Clough],” Hall said.
It’s just that mostly everybody else couldn’t care less. “A lot of people in Atlanta have no clue how good our baseball program is and how good our players are, and that a lot of guys in major-league baseball got their start either playing in the ACC or playing at Georgia Tech,” said Hall, with the Braves’ Mark Teixeira among them after spending the 1990 and 1991 seasons with the Jackets. “I do think from the public’s eye — I wouldn’t say that we’re forgotten — but they don’t know what we have here.”
You have a baseball program here that has spent the 1990s and much of the early 21st century resembling the Braves. That mostly has been for the good. Just like the Braves, Tech has struggled to avoid postseason collapses in embarrassing ways, but just like the Braves, at least Tech has reached the postseason enough to collapse.
That said, the Jackets just missed the NCAA tournament last season despite a winning record in the league and a splendid RPI. That’s why among the Jackets’ goals this season is to control their fate by staying away from the bubble. So this was a wonderful start. Before a crowd of 1,158, they spent their season opener surviving the wetness, the cold and Youngstown State with a 14-0 victory Friday.
Now all that the Jackets have to do through the end of spring is keep finding ways to help Hall stop wearing the same ring every day after this season. “I think this is the last one I got,” Hall said, rolling the huge chunk of metal on his finger. “That’s 2005 ACC champions.”
Hall laughed, saying, “I’d like to take this one off and put another one on.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
No slowing down for Chipper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. - At a time when much of the baseball-watching world believed Chipper Jones had nothing left to show us, he showed us he’s still Chipper Jones. At 35 he had one of his greatest years, hitting .337 with 29 homers, driving in 102 runs and scoring 108. And where, he is asked, would he rank 2007 among his 14 big-league seasons on the scale of purely personal satisfaction?
“Fourteenth,” he says.
He’s kidding. Spring training 2008 has dawned with Chipper Jones feeling … well, chipper. Apart from the bruised thumbs suffered when he tripped over the opposing third baseman (more about that later), last season was free of the injuries that limited him to 109 games in 2005 and 110 in 2006.
A year ago we all were wondering if this demonstrably great player was near an end. Today, Jones says, “I want to play until I’m 40.”
About last season: “It was awfully gratifying for me to prove I could still play the game at a high level when a lot of people were writing me off and saying they should get rid of my salary.”
Some athletes pretend they don’t read and hear criticism. Jones admits he sees and hears everything. “I read y’all’s paper and go online and check out the rumor mill,” he says. (Indeed, he even participated, without being solicited, in David O’Brien’s AJC Braves blog two weeks ago. He logged in as “U Kno Who.”)
Does U Kno Who get mad when he sees someone post something less than positive?
“No,” Jones says. “I use it as positive motivation sometimes.”
The creeping consensus in spring 2007 was that Jones’ body was beginning to fail. Something was always going wrong - a hamstring, an oblique, a foot. What prevented him from believing he’d become decrepit was that it wasn’t always the same injury. “Those last two years were really fluky [injuries]. It hasn’t been my body breaking down.”
Here he smiles in that wry Chipper way. “If Frenchy [Jeff Francoeur] takes a pitch and lets me steal third base [instead Francoeur grounded to third and Jones, running on the play, flipped over Pittsburgh’s Jose Bautista], I probably would’ve played 150 games last year.”
He played 134, his most since 2004, and he finished sixth in the Most Valuable Player voting, his best showing since he won the award in 1999. “Last year could have been my best all-around year. I was in the running for a Gold Glove -my errors were way down, and my fielding percentage was up -and I challenged for a batting title. And I hit .300 and drove in 100 and scored 100 just like I did when I was a younger cat.”
Sometimes it takes an outside observer to bring a familiar sight into sharper relief. Steve Phillips, once the Mets’ general manager and now an ESPN commentator, called Jones “the Derek Jeter of the National League” a couple of years ago, and Jeter is the most respected player in the sport. To be likened to him is the ultimate compliment. Jones took it as such.
“Jeter and I are good buddies,” he says. “We’ve squared off in a couple of World Series, and I think he’ll challenge 4,000 hits before he’s through. He’s a winner. I daresay I don’t think he’ll have any problem going into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.”
And his own Hall prospects? “I’m one of the guys who, if I quit right now, I wouldn’t make it. I’m on the cusp. The next five or six years will tell the tale.”
Until July 2007, Mark Teixeira was one of those outside observers. Today he hits behind Jones and says, “He’s the most underappreciated player in the game … No doubt Alex [Rodriguez] is the most talented player I’ve played with, but Chipper is right behind him.”
And then: “Chipper could get a lot more attention in New York or L.A., but he’s a country boy who likes to hunt and fish.”
If Jones indeed plays until he’s 40, he wants it to be in the only place he has ever played. “I’ve always wanted to finish here,” he says. “Atlanta is a laid-back town, and I’m not a big-city guy. I know I could probably garner more attention and accumulate more accolades in New York, but that’s not me.”
There was a time when the young Chipper was as beloved by Braves fans as Francoeur is now, but the inevitable familiarity (and a messy divorce) took some luster off the golden boy. Still, Jones says, “I think I have a really good rapport with fans. They certainly make me feel that way when I’m out in public. You can’t go to dinner or to a movie without people showering you with praise. You’ve never going to please everybody, and I’m not going to try. But I think I’m good enough for the majority.”
So here he stands: Larry Wayne Jones Jr., age 35, about to go to work on another February morning, feeling rather better this February than he did a year ago. “Last year I was putting a little pressure on myself after what had happened. This year I’m a little more relaxed.”
But not fully content. If he has learned nothing else, Chipper Jones has learned that baseball is about today and tomorrow, not yesterday.
“At the end of the day,” he says, “I’ve still got to keep putting up numbers to hold everybody at bay. At my age, if you have one bad year everybody thinks you’re washed up. And I don’t want to hear it.”
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
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