Gale Sayers

Gale Sayers. The Kansas Comet. Gallopin' Gale. Magic (as his late teammate, Brian Piccolo, described him.) I Am Third. Brian's Song.

Given Sayers' death today, the tributes are justifiably rolling in via news coverage and social media posts. It's been a bit hard to process because, yet again, one of my heroes has past.

Sayers was the most exciting running back that I've ever seen play. I was a kid who attended Kansas games with my parents and watched 48 leave tacklers in his wake given his fluid and elusive running style. It was amazing that a guy wearing high top leather football cleats could be that slippery.

He then went to the Chicago Bears where I remember watching the six touchdown game against San Francisco. And, I remember my heartbreak at his knee injuries, which cut his career short way too early.

I Am Third, Sayers' book, was the first book that I remember reading by a black author. The book was about being third behind God and family. I still have it in my library.

And, Brian's Song. I'm sure I cried at some movie growing up but this movie was the one that caused grown men everywhere to do it. The story, of Sayers' friendship with Piccolo, who is dying of cancer, is as meaningful today as it was in 1971.

I had the good fortune of meeting Sayers at a University of Kansas event many years ago. It was very brief but I remember the grace and elegance of the man. As I look back at the YouTube clips of him at Kansas and Chicago, that grace and elegance is displayed on the field as well.

2020 has claimed another victim. RIP Gale Sayers.

10 Albums: Kind of Blue

The final installment in my "10 Albums" is Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It is, without question, the greatest jazz album of all time and one of the greatest albums, of any kind, ever.

I rekindled my love affair with vinyl records about four years ago and it was in that shift that I realized I'd never truly investigated jazz. I was in a record store, collecting my first few vinyls, and happened to be in an outlet that has a huge jazz section. I knew Davis, of course, and had heard about Kind of Blue. It was there, I bought it, and the rest is why this album is the last record in my list of 10 albums.

Kind of Blue is, truly, a religious experience. There is a haunting element to the sounds that come from the  sextet of Davis, the amazing John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. (This assemblage of talent is akin to some weird, time-altered combination of Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.)

From the opening bass line of "So What," the album pulls you in and takes you to a place of rapt attention. This isn't an album that I listen to as background--it absorbs you and commands you to listen. And, every time I listen, I feel something new.

Kind of Blue is Davis' greatest work and his most acclaimed achievement. It is a must have on anyone's "10 Albums." 

Thanks for indulging me on this journey with my "10 Albums." Kind of Blue--one of the best albums, ever, in any genre.

"We've lost the traditions"

 I settled in yesterday to watch a very different College Game Day on ESPN given the all-too-known issues that you're aware of as relates to live sports, social distancing, on-air personalities and the constantly altered landscape of sports programming.

The Game Day crew cut away during the program to Chapel Hill, NC and interviewed Mack Brown, head football coach of the North Carolina Tarheels, before his squad took the field to play Syracuse. Brown talked of the challenge of leading and coaching his team in these odd times and made the prescient comment, "we've lost the traditions" associated with college football.  

Brown's comment was spot on. In 2012-13, I was part of a team that helped launch the College Football Playoff. This cross-functional group (Premier Sports Management, marketing representatives from various college conferences, and ESPN) was tasked with naming, positioning, branding and launching the playoff, which had been announced in April 2012 and was set to begin in 2014.

I led the effort to implement focus group research to interview college football fans (avid and moderate) to ensure that we had directional insights from that important audience. I attended the research in Kansas City, Dallas and Atlanta and watched groups of 10-12 people arrive adorned in their team's colors and all-too-ready to talk football and why they loved the game. In the Dallas session, a middle-age man wearing an Oklahoma sweatshirt sat next to a female recent Texas graduate who was wearing the burnt orange of the Longhorns. What enmity they shared as rivals was overshadowed by the passion they felt for college football.

To a person, each fan talked of the importance of the traditions of the sport--the cheerleaders, mascots, marching bands, tailgating, campus environments and other school-specific rituals, whether touching Howard's Rock at Clemson or planting the spear at Doak Walker Stadium at Florida State.

Football is back. But, let's be real--college football as a game is back. College football as a sport, pastime and passion point for thousands across the U.S. is not. Our traditions--the things that make us love college football--are, at least for this year, lost as we deal with the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

Traditions are why I love college sports. And, the loss of those traditions is just one more reminder that life is very, very sad right now. 

I miss the sport of college football.