Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
College football today. Yeah, I don’t like it. No, sir, not at all. And that’s not just the expired eggnog after the Egg Bowl talking either. Long gone are the days of the Bear, broadcaster Keith Jackson and even Bo Jackson. Call me old-school but I enjoyed seeing the Bear win championships and talk about calling his mama. He evolved over time and brought in black players at Alabama and won more championships. Heck, he even hid an entire offensive scheme over a summer and surprised Southern Cal with the wishbone after losing to the Trojans the previous fall.
That’s some kind of something.
But with today’s social media and players having to have so much attention, there’s no way a coach can ever have that type of control and leadership of a team. Heck, I’d like to see a coach dress up again and not look like a swoosh model. Coat and tie and fedora. Now that demanded respect and nowhere would you see Johnny Vaught caught dead with “Sip” on his being. I wonder if the Bear ever just said Bama? I highly doubt it.
And what about TV coverage? Did you see that debacle of broadcasting when Ole Miss traveled to Arkansas? No, not the actual game on the field but that trifecta of so called broadcasters who did everything but give play-by-play of the game. It was a disaster and not just because we lost. No, sir, give me Keith Jackson in the booth detailing the action and letting the game be the star. Whoa Nellie, these guys with the microphones today need to go back to school and learn the craft. If there’s anyone actually teaching the craft. You have to have something to actually say, though. Just talking for talk’s sake isn’t broadcasting. I remember in 1980 when NBC did an actual NFL telecast with no broadcasters and just stadium sound. The Jets beat my Dolphins 24-17 that day. I’d take that over today’s stable of broadcasters on the college and NFL level any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Bo Jackson. ‘Nuff said. But I’ll say a bit more. He high jumped 6 feet, 9 inches in high school. He’s 6-foot-1 tall. Rang up so many points as a high school decathlete that he didn’t have to run the 1,500 meters event. He’s got a Heisman, made All Star in both the NFL and MLB and hey, Bo knows. He ran over the Boz, hit towering home runs and no one went to buy popcorn when his team was on offense or he was in the batter’s box. He beat the Bear, hit a home run in his first MLB All Star at bat. He stole bases and infield hits and threw out runners at home deep from deep left field. He’s raised over a million dollars for tornado victims in Alabama through his “Bo Bikes Bama” campaign. In 2022, he donated $170,000 to pay for funeral expenses for the victims of the Uvalde, Texas tragic school event. The world could use a few more Bo Jacksons today and should appreciate the one we have way more than we do.
They just don’t make ‘em like the Bear, Keith Jackson or even Bo Jackson today. Just goes to show you that cloning isn’t a real thing or excellence and greatness would just be a test tube away. They all got there with hard work to hone their talent and a little bit of luck here and there. They were and are real men who cared about their word, thei
