Tom Brady — and more specifically: Tom’s Phone — has gotten a lot of heat recently for what may or may not be nestled snugly in that i-Phone inbox. In case you somehow missed it: Tom has been suspended 4 games by the most powerful court in the land: The NFL. While Roger Goodell was busy going all Judge Dredd out there on Patriots fans (*Author’s note: who shouldn’t be too worried about a rested, pissed off Brady coming back for the remaining 12 games of next year) the public at large has been wondering what was really in Tom’s phone.
While I don’t know what his phone might have looked like around the time in question, I have a pretty good idea of what Tom Brady’s inbox looked like this morning. How do I know? Because he decided he’d had enough of speculation and he wanted to turn his phone over to a serious journalist. Let’s take a look at Tom Brady’s inbox:
Pretty telling stuff. And while there’s no direct mentions in there referencing anything we can presume to be guilt or innocence, it does paint a pretty interesting picture of what life is like off the field for Mr. Ugg.
The news broke yesterday that Nebraska basketball player Walter Pitchford was skipping his senior season with the team. It wasn’t to go pro. Or transfer. Walt P for Degree! Yes, Walter Pitchford decided that he wanted to buckle down and pull a reverse-version-of-me and focus on schoolwork, seeking to obtain a business degree and launch a career. Which is truly admirable.
But, in the wake of his leaving the team, Husker fans were left wondering if this was actually what happened. Was Walt really leaving the squad just so he could focus on his academics? He certainly seems like a smart dude, a guy that would be open and honest about his intentions. But, damn it, do I love a conspiracy theory. Here are my theories on the real reasons Walter Pitchford left Nebraska basketball.
1. Walt P for 1D
As I’m sure all of you noticed, and were *totes devastated* by, Zayn from One Direction has left the group. This leaves not only a big hole in one of the world’s most popular groups, and a gaping chasm in my heart, but a job opportunity. Walt seems like an ideal fit for this Tween sensation. He’s cool. He’s got charisma. And he fulfills the groups need for a minority. Check, check, and check. Also, think how much more fun the lyrics would be with Walt added into the mix:
The story of his life, he drives the lane
He shoots the three, makin’ it rain!
Your ankles. . .are bro-oh-oh-oh-ken.
Or something like that. I totally don’t know the words to that song. Really, I swear I don’t.
2. Pursuing An Acting Career
Walt seems versatile. A renaissance man, if you will. So perhaps what he’s looking to do, here, is expand his brand a little bit. I could see him starring in a gritty, brooding, police drama that’s all simmering tension and dark, twisted investigation procedural. Now, if only we knew a wily, strange, philosophical dude that could play opposite the smoldering intensity of Walter Pitchford, True Detective. If only we had someone. . .
3. Working as a Full-Time Manager and Producer for his Boy Band, Terran Terran
I know, I know. Somehow I managed to throw together two idiotic conspiracy theories regarding boy bands in the span of 375 words. Sue me. Actually, don’t. I’ve watched some of the Aaron Hernandez trial and my lawyers wouldn’t have the balls or the bank account to try to make deflategate jokes during the proceedings.
In all seriousness, I think I speak for all Nebraska Basketball fans when we wish Walt the best. He may not be joining 1D or starring in an HBO series next to Tim Miles, but he did give us a magical run in 2014 that is hopefully still slingshotting our program forward with momentum, in spite of this year.
I’ll always remember Walt fondly for his electric shooting as a sophomore and his UFC looking post-move from this year’s crazy upset of Final Four team, Michigan State.
(*Author’s note: it’s that time of year again. One of my favorite sporting events is here once more: the Nebraska High School State Basketball tournament. In what is becoming an annual tradition, I will be reposting my epic-length ode to the Lincoln High School 2003 State Basketball champions. I have left the manuscript relatively untouched from it’s initial publishing from 2013. However, I have attempted to add in some pictures and have combined those 3-posts into one, massive, piece. Let’s all hop into the DeLorean, crank that bad boy up to 88 MPH and get our nostalgia on.)
PART I
The Lincoln High Links won a State Basketball title 10 years ago. The echoes of that victory still reverberate somewhere deep in my fandom. That title, even though it occurred during my sophomore year, attached itself to the narrative of my formative years at Lincoln High, a time period in my life that has truly become more gilded in my recollections the older that I get. It was a three game stretch in the early beginnings of spring, when the prairie pilot light for summer has only just been lit, and the icy fist of winter was loosening into a palm.
Was I on the team? Not a chance. I retired willingly after the boys of the Freshman “B” team took home the city title in 2002 and that was truly the ceiling for my basketball skills. Does it seem slightly ridiculous to still hold such a fond spot in my now semi-adult heart for a high school game from back when “Ignition (Remix)” by R. Kelly was noted as “my jam!”? Say what you will, but these were important times in a burgeoning sports-centric mind.
I knew from an early age that I wanted to go to Lincoln High. My parents had decided that they loved the multicultural aspect of both of their sons attending a high school that had a veritable United Nations of different cultures, races, and ideology. My brother was two years older than I was and he proudly sported the red and black. I would soon follow suit.
From the moment I watched my first Lincoln High basketball game, I was hooked. I had loved basketball from the moment I first started following the NBA in 1996 and, seeing how good the teams were from Lincoln High – their speed, toughness, and a healthy mix of hero worship for the guys who I knew were so cool at the place I wanted to become cool– I quickly became one of their biggest supporters.
I watched in agony as they were bounced from 2002’s state playoffs by their arch-rival Lincoln Southeast. It was a painful display of the rivalry between both schools that I would come to embrace and to love throughout my years of high school.
This out-and-out fanaticism for the basketball team certainly didn’t lessen when I found myself a sophomore at “The High.” If anything, it gained in momentum. I attended home games, cheering wildly until my vocal chords had been Fran Dreschered. I attended road games, jubilantly howling like an injured baboon until my voice sounded like Bobcat Goldthwaite. Any games I could attend that year, I did.
The team had amassed a gigantic following of fellow die-hards like myself. Chanting, swaying, we would jump up and down until the bleachers appeared ready to collapse like a decrepit building on the San Andreas fault. And those were just for regular, middle-of-the-week games. When it became clear that The High was headed to State once more, the stage was set for a massive, recklessly crunk, exodus of near-hooliganism to find its way to the Devaney Center.
You see, at Lincoln High, basketball was a great uniter. It took sectionalized groups and gave them a common interest. It took the marginalized, the outliers, and put them in a crowd of students who, for four quarters, all knew exactly what it was that they similarly desired: a victory. Stereotypes were shed, biases sidelined, and “in crowd” was lost to the gymnasium-filtered air. A mass of black and red, shoulder to shoulder, lungful to lungful of screaming pride.
Lincoln High Basketball, circa 1920 (Photo courtesy of family old photos.com)
Lincoln High was never a bad school, but it suffered from a reputation around town as being a school full of thugs. This feeling of persecution, of misconceived judgment but those with their noses too high in the air to get a good view of the actual place, only served to ratchet up the intensity when the Links found themselves headed to the Bob Devaney Sports Center for State Tournament games. Make no mistake, it was Us V.S. Them (*Author’s note: capital letters intentional.)
There was a great rising motion occurring, the week of the tournament. A soft-malleted crescendo beginning in the hallways and parking lots. Subtle, at first, but gradually building from echo to white noise to simmering hiss. Like prairie thunder in the distance or the electric charge in the air after scuffing your socked feet across a carpet in dry, dry winter months. It was the school. It was preparing to shift. The school that week felt like a carefully laid beartrap being pulled back to lethality. It was cranking, cranking, and delicately positioning. We were anxious to hear the jaws snap viciously forward but first we had to sit through another Spanish class.
I realize, at this point, that this may seem entirely too dramatic; too prosaic. I get that. But you have to understand that, during this time, this was about to be the biggest sports events of my life. I had too much pride, too much passion invested in Lincoln High sports to take this moment lightly. Lincoln High sports represented not only me. It represented us. At least to a certain extent and I wanted desperately for that “us,” that “we” to emerge at the top of the heap. I wanted the band to look good, I wanted our student section to “win” by outcheering and out-taunting the opposition. I wanted the kids who carpooled into school together in rusted out death-on-wheels vehicles to show that this book wouldn’t be judged by its cover, but by its heart and passion, and fight.
All of these complicated, intrinsically Lincoln High feelings were tied to the impending showdown at State. Yes, I knew it was only a game. Yes, I knew that if we lost I would be completely fine. No, I didn’t care about rationalization or logic. It was high school sports at their core and, I would argue, at their best.
First up for the team was playing Central again. The same Central that the Links had beaten in the playoffs the year before, a game in which the Central coach lost all semblance of cool and ended up getting at least one technical foul. The Eagles ended up scoring another “T” at some point in the game and I remember being completely blown away at how cool and collected the Lincoln High bench was.
Emotions may have been running high, but head coach Russ Uhing was unflappable. He was serene. He was Lake Placid on a windless day. Central’s coach was Lake Placid re-runs on the SyFy channel. Uhing was a single candle-flame on the edge of a Spa’s bath, windlessly unflickering. Central’s coach was a dude smoking bath salts. It was a grudge match from the start. It was another proud school, with a storied past and a currently checkered reputation, and the game came right down to the wire.
The Links had to hit free throws in order to send the game into Overtime, where they eventually emerged victorious, winning 68-61. In a change of pace from the previous year, no technicals were handed out. Uhing was as calm in his team’s victory on this day as he always was. Phil Jackson, on his most mellow pipe-ful of Ganj while watching the sun set over his Montana ranch, couldn’t have been more Zen than Russ Uhing.
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.
The team had survived and advanced. They were moving on. We were moving on. I was about to get my parents’ permission to skip class. All was right with the world.
PART II
I’ve already discussed what led us to this point. I’ve covered my borderline absurd love for the Lincoln High Links’ basketball program, from my time spent proudly attempting to be the glue-guy for the Freshman “B” squad to my boyhood hero-worship of the near-missing teams of the early 2000’s. I’ve explained my penchant for hyperbole and the rose-tinted glasses that I have strapped to my face like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 1980’s rec-specs. However, before we go any further I have a confession to make. Right here and right now. I need to get this off my chest before I pick up by describing Lincoln High’s second round tourney game against Omaha Westside.
In the darkened, bleak years of 15-year-old stupidity(*Author’s note: otherwise known as 2003) I wrote a rap song about the Lincoln High basketball team.
There, I said it.
I’m not proud of this fact. Honestly, it’s taken me 10 years to admit as much publicly, and I feel like if I’m going to continually burn on things I need to be as honest as possible. The 2003 version of me had very-loosely held ambitions to break into the rap game. So I sat down one fateful day, put pen to paper, and cranked out what might be the worst rap song since Marky Mark dropped his pants in “Good Vibrations.” I’ll spare most of you the gory details of this Shel Silverstein, paint-by-numbers rap song. Titled, “Game Time at the High” it involved name-dropping our starting five, bragging about the 22” rims on the cars in the school’s parking lot and any number of other atrocities. It was, essentially, a war crime. I was foolishly convinced by some of my classmates that the song wasn’t that bad (*Author’s note: it was.) and submitted it to the school’s poetry magazine at their behest. I don’t openly support book-burning, but I desperately wish that someone would hunt down the copies of this dark, dark chapter in my life and Farenheit 451 the hell out of them. Moving on.
After we had beaten Omaha Central the mood could only be described as crunk. As a mofo. We sprinted through the parking lot, war-whooping like the racist extras in an Indians V.S. John Wayne movie, baying at the night air. We were feverish. Fervent. We were 16-year-olds with wings on our heels and adrenaline pumping through our veins like we’d just gotten Pulp Fiction needled right to the heart. We were beside ourselves. Not knowing what to do to celebrate this enormous victory, we leapt into our one-friend-who-got-a-car-for-his-16th-birthday’s car and peeled out. Directly into traffic.
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.)
Unfazed by the instantaneous gridlock that is Devaney Center parking, we bumped DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat” as loud as our speakers and ears could take it. (*Author’s note: I’m not entirely sure how a song from 1996 came to be my own personal anthem for Lincoln High’s miraculous run, but it absolutely was. I mean, it’s no “Game Time at The High”, but it was okay.)
In typical high school fashion, once we got out of the parking lot of the Devaney Center, we were desperately in need of some fast food and a place to hang out. We rolled into Runza, piling gleefully out of the clown-car-packed vehicle and an impromptu dance party took place in the parking lot. At some point we decided that the best way to consecrate such an amazing sporting event was to have one of our group attempt to bong an entire mini-cone full of Mountain Dew from the restaurant. They had given out the cones to help our students cheer, apparently, but I feel relatively certain that we weren’t the only ones misusing them. The Dew-bonger choked and sputtered and generally soaked his Lincoln High shirt in a sticky amalgamation of 47 grams of sugar per serving mixed with all the unholy chemicals that make Mountain Dew so damn Mountain Delicious.
Eventually we had to head home. Hoarse. Exhausted. Way too excited to sleep without first burning off some energy by playing Nintendo 64 for a while to calm my nerves. Finally beginning to unwind to the sweet, sweet goodness of Goldeneye I was able to take a deep, rattling, breath. The next day would be a day game. It would be a parentally sanctioned truancy bonanza. It would be a showdown between the Westside Warriors and the Lincoln High Links.
Having school the day of a state basketball tournament game is pointless. It’s like trying to study in a library while Kiss is having a debauched, insane concert two Dewey Decimal places over from you. My concentration was shot. Our concentration was shot. Even the teachers seemed ready to “come down with something” and split as quickly as they could. The dull, throbbing white noise, like the soft humming of industrial air-conditioning that had been building; that had been continuing to increase incrementally from way off in the distance at stage left? It was getting louder. It was nearly drowning out math and science and English and the droning of teachers clicking through their 4th power point of the day. The school was poised at the precipice. We were looking over the edge, with our parachutes strapped on at 10,000 feet up. We were. Ready. To. Jump.
For the Westside game I had to play with the drumline at halftime. It through my whole pre-game routine out of whack and, initially, left me in a foul mood since I wasn’t able to stand in the student section like I normally would have. However once it was game time, the jackhammering heartbeat, the swaying crowd full of friends and colleagues and casual-acquaintances-turned-high-fiving-best-friends was too much for me. I was swept away. After proudly strutting onto the court to perform with our school’s dance team, replete with Nelly-style Band-Aids under our eyes (*Author’s note: big ups, 2013, on leaving that weird trend behind.) and red and black camouflage bandanas, I was able to set my drum aside and focus purely on the action on the court.
And “action” is perhaps underselling how exciting the game actually was.
It was a back and forth battle. Both teams were scrappy, over-achieving units that had good coaching. They had a rabid student section that truly gave as good as they got. Almost. We shouted. We chanted. We attempted to will our boys to a victory against the invading hordes from Omaha. As the game came down to the wire neither team was able to pull significantly ahead. The Links gamely clung to their opponents, refusing to allow the opposition to pull away. Uhing was Freon. He was pre-Al Gore Ice Caps. The team never flinched. Hovering somewhere above the din, above the tumultuous Molotov Cocktail of our unbridled emotions, was a sense of calm.
The team. The coaches. They were oblivious to the bedlam occurring in the Black and Red mosh pit behind their basket. They were focused and hungry and full of flinty-eyed determination borne of hours spent shooting in stiflingly hot gyms, borne of suicides run from missed free throws (*Author’s note: I’ve seen both of these with my own eyes. I’ve been in the gyms at Lincoln High in the summer time and they’re Devil’s Oven hot and I’ve seen the looks of teammates when you’re responsible for making them run. Frankly? I prefer the heat.) and borne of a stiff, rigid pride that won’t let you turn your head away even if you fear the worst.
With time running down, the Links were down by 1 point. I honestly don’t remember who drove the ball, but I do remember that he missed. I remember that the ball seemed to hang for a crystalline moment, suspended in animation, softly perched upon the wishes and hopes of a bug-eyed student body in mid-air.
10 years ago, Nick Madsen went up and tipped in a shot. At the buzzer. For the win.
10 years ago the students of Lincoln High school volcanically erupted. Exploded into a massive, TNT-roar that ripped through our chests and nearly ruptured our vocal chords. Time had expired and Lincoln High had, again, managed to desperately cling to another victory. They had survived. We had survived.
Our student section was a joyous prison riot. I grabbed the closest student to me and shook him like I was a dirty cop, trying to force a confession. Screaming, leaping, jumping. The band wasn’t playing. The students weren’t worried about who they were suddenly grabbing. Parking lot beefs were suddenly turned to full-on bearhugs and some people merely stood in a stunned silence. Simply put, the moment escapes even my most desperate, breathless, re-tellings.
(*Author’s note: after I posted this, my brother was able to track down a YouTube video from Jarod Gilmore of the fourth quarter. Say what you want about the quality of video, in 2003 this was as close as you got to HD, but if you just listen to the noise you’ll understand how exciting this game was.)
We rocket-boosted out into the parking lot. Pouring out. Holding banners and flags and wearing red, black, and cowsuits (*Author’s note: yes. A group of students all got together and coordinated the wearing of cowsuits to the game. They held a banner that read, “Udderly Unbeatable” which I still find to be a stroke of genius even at age 26. You can never have too many fans in cowsuits, in my opinion, and they set the standard for bovine-crowd interactions. Eat your heart out, Chik-Fil-A.) we flooded out onto the concrete landings of the stadium sprinting at Usain Boltian speeds.
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.)
I still had track practice that day, and ran with red-dye in my hair and flecks of paint dripping down my face. If we would’ve had a meet that day, based solely on the adrenaline tsunami, I feel certain we could’ve shattered some school records.
We were in the championship game. After two spinal-spasming-ly close contests we had somehow come out with only one game standing in our way. We were to play Lincoln Southeast for the state championship. We would be coming face to face, head to head, crowd to crowd with our biggest rivals. It would be Montagues and Capulets with jerseys and a ball. It was to be Sharks and Jets without all that sissy dancing. We had one team to beat. We had the team to beat. We went home that night, joyful rabble-rousers, and prepared ourselves for the biggest game of 2003.
PART III
(*Author’s note: And here, after way too many words, is the final chapter. If you’ve read this far, you’re truly an endurance athlete.)
The weekend games are always the most fun in the state basketball tournament. Sure, it’s awesome skipping 2/3 of your classes for the day to paint up like a strange combo of Darth Maul and the least sneaky special ops soldier ever, but having nearly a full day to work yourself into a Seismically active, frothing at the mouth maniac? That’s what makes Saturday at the State Basketball Tournament better.
You have to understand the rivalry between Lincoln High and Lincoln Southeast at this point in time in order to better understand the intensity between the two teams and fanbases. In the early-mid 2000’s Southeast was a sports powerhouse. They were cranking out division I talent in football, basketball, and baseball. They were routinely among the top teams in the state in basketball, having lost in the previous year’s finals after offing the Links in a brutally tough game in the semi-finals.
When Southeast and Lincoln High’s basketball teams met on the court, the intensity level would catapult off the radar. Students would camp out for games the moment school got out. Fights would break out, Principals would wade shoulder deep into student sections in an effort to keep the peace, and fire marshal’s would stop people from getting in at the door due to gyms being over capacity.
It was an old-school, bitter, rivalry that broke bonds and divided friendships. I knew several kids who were at Southeast. I thought they were great. Until it was game time. Then I would launch into a rapid fire shit-talking attempt to verbally incinerate them and they would immediately fire back. We would inevitably find ourselves on opposite sides of the court and I believed I was honor-bound to out-shout, out-taunt, and out-cheer whomever stood in opposition to the Red and Black freight train.
The games were always contentious. They were emotional slugfests that left your scalp tingling, your throat desperately calling for hot liquid, and your adrenal glands ready to go on strike. By halftime.
I honestly can’t remember if we beat Southeast that year. I vaguely recall losing to them, but I truly can’t be sure. (*Author’s note: I know, I know. I just spent 200 words talking up the games as completely unforgettable. What can I say? I’m old. I’m broken down. Maybe someone can refresh my memory, when this post comes out. In the meantime I’ll be crushing up Ginseng and snorting lines of it off my mirror in an effort to stave off my on-rushing senility.)
The bottom line is, when your whole rivalry is predicated on white-hot, liquid-magma, hatred for the opponent revenge isn’t really necessary for motivation. Ever game against Southeast, whether we won or lost, felt like it was a Quentin Tarantino revenge film reaching its gory climax. Dlinks Unchained, if you will. (*Author’s note: I apologize. That’s a little corny, even by my standards.)
As we mad-dashed our way into the student section for the game our rising action was becoming fully complete. Our deus ex machina was firmly in place. The slow simmer from part one that I had mentioned, that flickering spark? It was a boiling, raging, forest fire.
The distant timpani-roll that had been building sonorously since Thursday of that week was now a full on spastic, flaming drum solo so loud it resounded in your lungs. The tension wasn’t so thick you could cut it with a knife, it was so thick that you would need a logging crew to chainsaw their way through after using TNT to explode open fissure-like crack.
I was 16 and on fire with school pride; radiating with hope that my school, our school, could somehow continue their Nantucket Sleighride towards victory. I was fully prepared to howl with all my wolfen fury until my lungs exploded like a too-full party balloon that has landed underneath a stiletto heel. I looked left. I looked right. We were a pack. A rabid, heaving, viscerally charged mass of desperate, pitched longing. When the band struck up their notes we yowled with unrepentant fervor.
When the team was introduced I screamed like a Bieber-groupie getting backstage passes, hitting pitches and octaves that, even at 16, would have astounded auditory scientists. Fortunately, I was one voice among many, many, cheers and my own voice was swallowed up by the ever-increasing decibel detonation coming from the student section. It was death metal concert loud. It was shuttle launch loud. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the Devaney center as fiery before a game has even tipped before or since.
Once the game began our manic chants and hoarsely defiant screams filled the air. We wanted to pay back Southeast for the previous year. We wanted to assert ourselves as the basketball power in the city; in the state. We wanted vengeance.
Immediately things started going wrong for the Links. Shots weren’t falling. The offense wasn’t flowing. The team battled, to be sure, determined to outwork their slow start. Southeast started scoring. They were hitting buckets. They were rebounding. They had all the answers on defense. An icy finger of doubt slid down my spine; a creeping, uncomfortable caress.
Southeast seemingly had the answer for everything. There was a subtle riptide pulling at our ankles, tugging us out and away from our steel-mill-hot passion. We fought it. We kicked and screamed and tried to head against the current. Southeast just kept pulling ahead. As the first quarter was drawing to a close the Links still hadn’t hit a basket. Or a free throw.
I had completely depleted my repertoire of swear words at this point.
Desperately I searched for anyone who might be bi-lingual to bail me out with new cuss words but, upon Southeast scoring yet again I broke the search off and went to my tried and true, old school American curses. I was driven to inventing brand new f-bomb combos, stringing together obscenities like a foreign cabbie in rush hour who didn’t quite have a handle on the English language yet. The quarter ended with Southeast up 13-0. The Links had inexplicably been shut out.
Coach Uhing was liquid nitrogen. He was a human Polar Bear Plunge. The team fed off this calm.
(Image courtesy of Journalstar.com)
We did not.
Eyes bulging. Sweating like I had just gotten done playing in the game myself. Mind reeling. I was a meth-lab of emotions. I hadn’t given up. Oh, no. But I was drastically, stringently worried. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had never seen our team get blanked in the first quarter of a game. With Southeast up by 13 the lead certainly wasn’t insurmountable but it was sizeable.
The Southeast fans were on a rampage. There was blood in the water and they were hungry. They were Shark Week in HD, swarming viciously with their teeth out and their hands high in the air, high-fiving hard enough to amputate. I don’t blame them. They were thunderously pleased with their team’s performance, holding their distraction-balloons high into the air in the shape of zeros. They were the bellows pumping onto the hot, bitter coals of our would-be vengeance. They scored again at the start of the second half.
We found ourselves firmly strapped in on the front car of a cocaine roller coaster.
They had 15. We had nothing.
They had 15. We had each other.
We had our team. We had the immutable, foolhardy hope of die-hard believers, even though the light was flickering and the clock was ticking.
Our intensity rose. Combustion engine firing on anger and pride and that all-too-familiar feeling of our shoulder blades meeting the wall with nowhere further to retreat to.
Suddenly we scored our first basket. Then we scored another. We redoubled our fanaticism. Cajoling. Pleading. Fighter-plane loud as our boys engaged in evasive maneuvers in the on court dogfight. Basket by basket. Inch by inch. The Lincoln High Links were pulling themselves out of the freshly dug grave of a scoreless first quarter, zombies coming back once more. No longer was this a bloody stomping. This was Rocky in the 12th round, toe to toe.
To be honest, the rest of the game blurs a little to me from here. It’s like an epic watercolor that sort of ran together into a beautiful palette of colors and images. A big shot here. A big stop there. The team’s bench imploring the fans to keep the intensity level high. Uhing clapping calmly, as if he was at a mediocre theater production.
By the time we took the lead, we were in a state of delirium. The cadaver of the first quarter had somehow been Frankenstein-ed back to life. Stitched together, an amalgam of pieces playing their part, and lightning bolted to accelerating life. I’ve never heard the Devaney Center louder before or since. Lincoln High Alum, some of the proudest I’ve known, responded to our energy. Parents and students and players alike leaping to their feet.
We ended up winning the game, that day 10 years ago, by 5 points. Scoring 43 points in the final three quarters we were able to outlast the Southeast Knights. Though I never would have admitted it at the time, they fought valiantly. (*Author’s note: I can only clearly assess our rival school now, 10 years in the future, if that’s any indication of how heated our rivalry was.)
As the final horn sounded, anointing a new king in the State of Nebraska, we detonated. Mt. Vesuvius met Pompeii and our student section spontaneously combusted into madness. People were falling, crying, jumping wildly into the air. Insecure young men were hugging passionately and everyone, everyone, felt like we had just conquered the world.
It was 10 years ago. I was 16. And it still gives me goosebumps to recount the scene.
Our team, ever conscious of their rowdy and reckless fans, their hooligans, stood in front of the student section and let us buffet them with a joyful typhoon. Holding their jerseys up for all in the stadium to see. Lincoln High, they said. “Lincoln High” we screamed. Our pride was radiant.
Coach Uhing smiled.
The team climbed ladders and cut down nets. They were given medals and a trophy and an assembly where the entire school attended, cheering like lunatics for the guys that had finally brought home a state basketball title. They had blazed through collective, beating-as-one hearts, and etched their names in neon across the remainder of the school year.
They had done it. They had successfully climbed the mountaintop. They were Sir Edmund Hilary. And we fancied ourselves their Tenzing Norgays.
They had won for themselves. They had one for each other. They had won for black and for red and for the coaches who believed in them all along.
They had won for Lincoln High.
Whether or not they knew it that day, they had won for us.
(*Author’s note: the best part of writing this absurdly long, self-indulgent memoir has been all the people who have shared what their experiences at these games were like. Whether it was former players, former students, or anyone lucky enough to have been cheering for the Links that year, everyone was — and still is– moved by the victories.
If you made it through this rambling piece, feel free to offer your own testimony in the comments section. I was blown away by how many of us still care so deeply about this team and that time in our lives. I would love to know where you were when the horn sounded or what you were thinking when the clock hit zero. Thanks for reading. Go Links.)
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.)
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.)
(Headline image courtesy of Omaha.com) (*Author’s note: I was too cheap to pay $2.95 for the full article.)
Tim Miles is having kind of a rough year. After starting the year out with high expectations, and what appeared to be a program on the brink of wave-riding their way down a big Tsunami of momentum carried over from an incredible finish to the 2014 season, the Husker Men’s Basketball team has crashed and burned in Evel Knievel-like fashion.
Miles has tried coaching them up, slowing it down, guest speakers, and virtually anything short of hiring a voodoo priestess to come in and stick pins in Melo Trimble’s hair-doll. (*Author’s note: he may have done that at some point, too.) His latest desperate tactic has been locking the Huskers out of their locker room and posh traning facilities at the Hendricks Training Complex.
That means the players will have no smoothie bar, no shower heads with Bluetooth speakers and no players lounge which basically looks like Macauly Culkin’s house from Richie Rich.
So, with not a moment to lose, Tim is taking one last desperate move to fire up his team. He’s pulling out all the stops to try to get his team motivated for the final few games of the year. This is the leaked audio of his latest attempt: a stunningly dope rap track and music video. The words to the song are listed beneath the song.
(Intro)
If you havin’ real problems, I feel bad for you, son.
I got 99 Problems but Hendricks ain’t one.
I got dudes brickin’ threes while I’m grabbing deeze
Haters up in stripes I call ‘em referees
Stinking up the Vault, yo I need Febreze
Bout to snap like a tendon in D-Rose’s knees
I’m from the great white North, more Dakota than Fanning,
Call me the GOAT like I’m Peyton Manning
Underneath this button up I’m built like Tatum, Channing
Taking more selfies than a girl who be tanning.
I’m catching all types’a shit from those Twitter Bros
And Walt P’s in the paint and he’s throwing Bos
Shavon’s so damn smart he’s worried ‘bout Microbes
And I can’t stop staring at Thad Matta’s nose.
I’m getting’ so emotional, startin’ to feel my feelings
And I still don’t know the damn difference between Australia and New Zealand.
From D3 to D1, Son, I Ain’t Dumb
I got 99 Problems, but Hendricks Ain’t One.
Hit me
99 Problems but Hendricks ain’t one
If you having real problems I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but Hendricks ain’t one
Hit me
Well it’s 2015 and I’m so, so def
But standin’ in my way? It’s the motherfuckin’ ref.
I got two choices, ya’ll, shut my mouth up or
Chase down that Douche and start to stompin’ on the floor.
Now I ain’t trying send ‘em to the free throw line
But I got a few dollars I can pay the fine
So he pulls me over to the side of the court
And I heard “Son do you know why I’m techin’ you for?”
Cause I’m nerdy and I’m pissed and you’re screwing my team
And you’re worried I’m bout to turn you into a Twitter Meme?
Should I head back to the Bench, to try to let off steam?
“Well you was getting too loud when you started to scream
Head back to your bench for I throw your ass out
“Now if you’ll excuse, me Tim, I’m goin’ over there to pout”
I ain’t going back to shit, all my gripes are legit
“Do you mind if I talk to those other ref a bit?”
Well the fans are all pissed and so’s the rest of my staff
And trust me when I say you don’t want Molinari’s wrath
“Listen, I’m probably shouting ‘Boom’ when I drop the T,
“Unless you take two steps back and away from me!”
Well I’m not backin’ up, this is turned to a mess
You’re reffing up this game like your name’s Carl Hess
“See how you feel when the league fines you a ton”
I got 99 problems but Hendricks ain’t one
Hit me
99 Problems but Hendricks ain’t one
If you having real problems I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but Hendricks ain’t one
Hit me
Now once upon a ‘bout a season ago
We were magma hot, straight smokin’ yo.
We were burning through teams: the passion, the drama!
Now we’re 4th tier news behind a bunch of Llamas.
With all the losses, the haters be hatin’
The best part of this year? Man, at least we’re not Creighton.
Yeah, sure, they might’ve beat us in the head to head
But that’s like being the deadest Zombie on Walking Dead.
We’re losing more than the pounds of Rick Ross
And this season’s ass backwards callin’ it Kriss Kross.
We’re fadin’ real hard at the end of the race
Why does Fran McCaffrey have such a punchable face?
And now come March, it’s our thumbs they’re gonna twiddle
And our fan base is dividing like Tom Crean’s hair middle
But next year Huskers, it’s eternal hope springs
And we’ll see what new guys and some 4 stars brings
Maybe we’ll learn to break a full court press
Beat it black and blue like that Twitter Dress
Or was that gold and white, yo my rap is done.
I got 99 problems but Hendricks ain’t one
Hit me
99 Problems but Hendricks ain’t one
If you having real problems I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but Hendricks ain’t one
Hit me
The NFL is known for being an all-powerful, narrative-vice-gripping, billionaires club. So what usually happens when you get a bunch of super-rich white dudes together that are struggling to control their apparent image problems? (*Author’s note: it’s called congress. Hiiiii-oooooh! But Seriously. . .)
You get more even more secrets and ass-covering than even a paranoid Illuminati-crazed whacko could come up with. At No Coast Bias we’re determined to crack the code and get the behind-the-scenes access that our readership demands.
This is where the NFL Combine comes into play. The combine has turned into a multi-day hypefest that explodes onto our social media timelines with pictures of fat guys burning through more 40s than in a party scene for a Big Pun biopic, NFL fanbases losing their minds over the measurables of their favorite prospect, and a whole lot of super-athletes being judged by chubby dudes sitting at their office desks (Author’s note: see: Hatch, Chris).
But what about the lesser-publicized events that the NFL uses to try to judge a prospect? Are there, in fact, secret “measurables” that only the innermost circles of the NFL Combine are privy to? We dug deep and utilized our secret sources that are connected on the deepest levels of security to find out that there are, indeed, 4 additional events that the NFL tests for at their fabled combine. Here they are.
1. The 40 Lawyer Dash
This test is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Given the NFL’s recent troubles off the field, this is a speed test in which prospects try to see exactly how quick they can lawyer up should they run into any kind of legal trouble. How fast can that shifty running back from the Pac-12 manage to find himself a defense attorney? Can that star linebacker from the SEC get to a prestigious, amoral law firm before TMZ finds out what happened? This drill is carefully scrutinized by both electronic timing and several corrupt judges brought in to monitor the potential legal proceedings.
2. The Character-Based Questionnaire
We’ve all heard about the Wonderlic test and we’ve heard horror stories about players with checkered pasts getting questioned by directors of player personnel from various teams. However, this year the NFL opted for one-question test that allowed them to identify any potential troubles that may occur when the players aren’t on the grid iron. Because this year: what concerns do they have for you if you’re not Jameis?
3. The Weed Brick Lateral
At this point, I’m not sure why this isn’t just a publicly held event like the other parts of the combine. Every NFL player needs to have a fall guy ready and waiting to say, “Uhh. . .yeah, officer. That is my weed. Not the guy driving the Maserati’s. Totally mine. Whoops.” This event tests the dexterity and fast twitch muscles of potential players who are required to quickly dump a brick of weed into the waiting hands of their less-financially-important homeys.
4. The Goodell Says Jump, You Say “How High.” Vertical Test
This is, for all intents and purposes, the single most important phase of the NFL’s secret combine. At least, it is to Roger Goodell. And, if the man seated on the Iron Throne approves of your obedience and approves of your undying fealty, he will not put your name on the black list. (*Author’s note: And, yes, that is supposed to be kind of a racist version of a double entendre) If you deny swearing your blood-oath to the master and high priest of all of the National Football League, Goodell will recommend that are you immediately sent to the football hinterlands to languish in misery for all of eternity. Or as the NFL calls it: you’ll get drafted by the Buffalo Bills.
. . .and just like that: **POOF** the season is over.
Last night was the culmination of all the hype and games and insanity of an entire 6 months of professional football. NFL Commisioner, Roger Goodell, is probably pretty glad the season is over. It was a rough one for ‘ole Rog and his neighborhood. During all the business of the NFL’s ultimate game and the ultimate celebration of the NFL, Roger was inundated with messages from well wishers and haters alike.
Fortunately for you, we’ve partnered up with everyone’s favorite perv-hackers – you know, the ones who have made every celebrity cower in fear as they feverishly attempted to delete their sext messages from “The Cloud”— and managed to get just a snippet of some of the texts that were sent to Roger Goodell last night.
His son was among those checking in with his Dad on the eve of his big moment.
It turns out that, even as commissioner, Goodell has a lot of say in the commercials during the Super Bowl.
He was in close contact with the halftime entertainment throughout the morning of the big game.
Johnny Football took time out from hitting the beer bong to shoot the Commish a nice text.
He was still having trouble getting people to answer his questions, though.
He was even receiving texts from the mysterious great beyond. . .
Even beleaguered former NFL running back, Ray Rice, was trying to get an audience with Goodell.
Over the last few days we’ve all become certifiable experts on PSI, ball inflation, and have found ourselves inundated with #deflategate and all the insanity the comes with an extra long week of NFL Super Bowl hype. Yesterday, Tom Brady addressed the media and went into excruciating detail about the minutiae of how he picks out his footballs for use in the games.
He denied any and all allegations of tampering with the pigskin. Tom Brady, according to Tom Brady, always has and always will play fair. But you can bet that as soon as Tom stepped off that podium and headed back to his supermodel wife his phone was exploding with text messages.
Fortunately for you, we’ve partnered up with everyone’s favorite perv-hackers – you know, the ones who have made every celebrity cower in fear as they feverishly attempted to delete their sext messages from “The Cloud”— and managed to get just a snippet of some of the texts that were sent to Tom Brady last night.
A confused former Tour de France champion weighed in with his opinion on the matter.
Tom’s favorite Red-Zone Target wanted to extend his heartfelt support.
New England Running back, and most ironically named human on earth, LeGarrette Blount reached out to offer his thoughts.
Tom’s long-time adversary fired off a quick, parody-song-laden text.
Tom was even getting accidental texts last night!
Tom received nothing but support from his long-time coach.
A mystery texter weighed in with thoughts on a possible replacement, should Brady get suspended.
Even the Dallas Cowboys had players reaching out to Brady.
Even the defensive players from the Patriots were showing their support for their QB.
None other than the ‘Ole Gunslinger made a textual appearance on Brady’s phone.
I once saw a gratuitous sex scene involving Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The film was Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. The day? Creepily enough: Father’s day. My dad, ever the film auteur had taken us all to the local art-house movie theater. You know, a place where they don’t just show movies, they show films. What he didn’t know, and what none of us saw coming—not my horrified mother, my appalled brother and certainly not your eyes-bulging in horror author – was that this particular film started out with about 30 seconds of Seymour Hoffman’s naked ass really getting it on with the oft-nudey Marisa Tomei.
I watched in abject horror, eyes eventually widening to Nicolas Cage-ian size and my jaw crashing open like a Great White in mid seal-grab during an uber slow-mo shot during Shark Week. Mercifully, it ended. That movie, however, didn’t get much more family-friendly. Even for a family full of such grizzled, hard-core movie fans, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead was intense and stomach-churningly gritty. (*Author’s note: If you’ve seen it, you know how weird of a father’s day film it would be: featuring trans-gendered drug dealers and patricide, among other bizarre themes.)
image courtesy of: blog.nileslibrary.org
At family gatherings we still bring up that ill-fated sex scene. We don’t remember the academy award winners that were involved, or much else about the day celebrating my father. But that kind of ugliness is legendary.
That’s what we saw on Saturday night in the Nebraska V.S. Cincinnati game. It was grotesque. It was brutal. It was Phillip Seymour Hoffman sex scene ugly. But it was unforgettable. Some people, when faced with what amounted to complete on-court insanity between the Huskers and the Bearcats, may have turned to statistics. Others may have turned to the clichés that seem to come so naturally to all of us when discussing sports. Me? I, predictably, turn to movies to help me figure out what I just saw.
Unlike that all-time, pantheon moment of Hatch family awkwardness, however, there was a silver lining to this exercise in corneal cub-stomping. The Huskers were able to pull out the win. Quite frankly, it was remarkable.
On Saturday Night, the Huskers found themselves in a bar brawl. I’m talking bottles breaking over heads, John Wayne sliding dudes down a bar, smashing them through whiskey shots and ash trays. The whole thing. They took the game and turned it inot an alley-way brawl for 50 minutes and somehow got the last laugh.
They shot a rousing 32.7% from the field and turned the ball over approximately fiftyleven times (*Author’s note: alright, more like 22, but it felt like it numbered in the thousands.) but were able to somehow eke out a double overtime win against a 2013 NCAA Tournament team.
How did they do it? How did they miss 68% of the shots they took and still somehow emerge victorious? By fighting. Clawing. Scratching. By turning the game into the climactic fight scene from Rocky IV where the Italian Stallion endures such an absurd beating that you can hardly watch, but then somehow digs deep enough to rally for the ugliest style of win possible.
In short: it was the best-worst win I’ve ever seen.
We saw something from this team that we weren’t entirely sure they had. Mental fortitude. Confidence. Straight up, stone cold bad-assery. When Terran Petteway fouled out with 40 seconds to go in the first Overtime the Huskers got off the mat one more time and put their dukes up. It’s why Tai Webster hit 4 clutch free throws down the stretch to keep the Huskers in it and kept leaving skidmarks on the pavement, peeling out in an attempt to leave 2013TaiWebster in his rearview mirror.
I am not saying that this victory should cure the Huskers’ woes moving forward. They have a lot tougher games yet ahead. They will not be able to win if they continue to turn the ball over so vociferously and continue to be colder from behind the arc than a frost-bitten Eskimo.
But that interior toughness, with Walter Pitchford and an undersized David Rivers giving everything they had? That perimeter defense from Petteway and the suddenly-stunningly-confident Benny Parker? The hoarse crowd, screaming so hard that their abs feel like they just P-90ed their X’s off and their vocal chords clanging together like shattering cymbals? That is something that they can replicate.
image courtesy of: binaryapi.ap.org
They may be still recalibrating their equilibrium, this time trying to find their balance with the weight of expectations lain upon their shoulders for the first time in what feels like decades. They may be beaten up and lacking height and depth. But this game could have been a devastating loss and, instead, is poised to be the steel on steel pounding that needs to happen to forge a team’s identity from the flames. It was so ugly that it was kind of beautiful.
So what happens now? Do the Huskers take this game and kiln themselves into something special? Do they grit their teeth and turn grinding molars into a cocky smirk as they rise? Let’s hope so. This game cleaned me all out of movie metaphors for first-fighting. And we’ve still got a hell of a lot of season to go.
There are precious few things that make the Nebraska football program unique anymore.
The facilities, once a crown-jewel of a program far ahead of their time, are still phenomenal. But the memo got out. Now there are absurdly cool, space-aged, facilities from Tuscaloosa to Eugene, Oregon that make the Death Star look like that old refrigerator cardboard box you cut out to let your kid play inside with one window and a instantly deteriorating door.
The money, which has never truly stopped flowing, is still outstanding. Last year, the Husker football program made $35 million dollars in net profit. That was good enough to rank them as the 10th most valuable football brand in the country according to Forbes. But other schools are making money, too and will continue to do so in the hand-over-fist cash-cowing that is the NCAA’s profit-mongering mission. In fact, the Huskers have climbed these ranks in recent years and continue to be highly profitable, due in part to the revenue sharing from the Big Ten Network.
But the gap has narrowed, there, too.
A coaching/support staff that used to be ahead of the curve. From utilizing a unique and precise offensive scheme mixed with a terrifying defense, to a strength and conditioning program that revolutionized the sport, to a training table that was more MGM Grand while others were Truck Stop buffets. All those advantages have either dissipated entirely or are sizzling towards evaporation in the pan of hot competition.
The winning has stagnated, the coaching staff is no longer the genius-level advantage that it once appeared to be, and the aforementioned peaks have been shorn off by that dreaded word we hear so often spoken into the microphones of our 24-hour news networks: parity.
No. None of these make Nebraska what it is and none of them have brought Nebraska to where it is.
The one thing that makes Nebraska truly and utterly unique? Our giveashit. It’s still there. In spite of national irrelevancy and coaching changes and 140 character soap boxes dividing fans on either side of the Bo-Son Dixon Line. Our giveashit has remained steadfast while other coaches plead with their student sections to come watch their National-Championship-Caliber teams and attendance around the country is in a downward spiral. Coveted by other programs around the nation, this insane give-too-much-of-a-fuck passion is exactly what gives our program its identity.
Image courtesty of: huskernsider.tumblr.com
But starting last season I felt something for the first time that stunned me to the core of my fanhood (*Author’s note: which I will readily acknowledge, isn’t nearly as important as “my being” in spite of what some people would like you to believe). It lurched into the pit of my stomach at the end of the 2013 Iowa game, like a rickety elevator that drops a little further than it should when you finally reach your stop, and it resonated with me on a level – bouncing around between the foggy memories of Mackovickas and Peterbilt bicep tattoos of my youth and the foggier-still memories of Jungle Juice and Bill Callahan from my College days– that I hadn’t realized was there. Imperceptible. And not. The tide starting to pull slightly at my ankles before it fully reverses out towards the ocean.
Our giveashit was waning. Like the inevitable shifting of the prairie moon above our prairie state. The full moon was starting to shrink. Roaring forest fires had been reduced to manageable, Boy-Scout-Weenie roasts. Tickets were on sale and eyebrows were raised. 1.8 million voices were murmuring about that exotic love-child our passion and our lack-of-options produces every Saturday: the sellout streak. The sellout streak. Of course fans still bought. They bartered and begged. Hell some probably stole. But the ticket was not nearly as scalding hot as it has been in year’s past. Scalpers weren’t getting a return on their investments. Like a Bernie Madoff patsy, post-Ponzi, they were left wondering what happened to their once-“sure thing” investment.
While that giveashit was stalling out, bouncing forward in fits and spurts, herking and jerking like an ancient automobile trying to spark itself to life Nebraska football was doing what it always does. Winning against teams they should beat. Losing against teams that were equal or better. It was like a room in the funhouse full of 9-3 mirrors. And this funhouse wasn’t much fun anymore.
The Lake of Nebraska football had been, seemingly, perpetually still for the last few years. On Sunday, Shawn Eichorst decided to make waves. On Sunday Shawn Eichorst pulled the plug out from the treadmill we’ve been stuck on for the last 7 years and a lot of emotions went tumbling to the ground in a suddenly-nostalgic heap. What Eichorst did was slide his chips onto the roulette table, pick red, and gamble his job that he could reinvigorate the key element in keeping Nebraska from fading like so many of those ancient trophies we can’t quite seem to forget around here.
And may people were upset with his decision. Understandably so. Coach here long enough, keep your players out of the Urban Meyer school for hard knocks, and win some games? We’ll like you. Bo certainly seemed like a decent enough dude. Sure he F-Bombed the fans (*Author’s note: us, as I routinely refer to my fellow maniacs) in a hidden recording and turned into Mount Vesuvius on the sidelines. But his players loved him – as you would hope they would – and he seemed genuinely interested in the program being like a family. I can understand why so many of them lashed out at Twitter and the man who broke that would-be family apart in search of something better.
One of my favorite TV shows when I was in college and had more time to watch these things was Entourage. It was surface level fun. It had a group of buddies living every group of buddies’ dream: living large in Hollywood. As it progressed, however, the formula began to repeat itself.
Image Courtesy of: deadline.com
Vince would get a big part, do something artsy and then make a decision that – inexplicably — didn’t involve money. Ari would be a raging jerk to everyone, Turtle would get high and dream big, Drama would get a chance to reinvent himself and then botch it due to unchecked anger/anxiety issues, and E would try to squirm his way out from under Vince’s all-encompassing stardom to score a piece of the pie for himself based on his own talents. When the time came: I was ready for the show to be done. I didn’t dis-like it. It was just time to stop it and for HBO to bring in some new talent.
I also understand Husker fans’ fear of the unknown. It’s scary to walk up the steps of a new waterslide, only being able to see the stunning drop from over the railing’s edge. But I’m ready for a new ride. I’m ready for excitement. Our giveashit isn’t dead, but I don’t want it to go comatose.
We’ve been trying the standing long jump for too long at Nebraska. I’m ready to get a running start. Even if that means we have to walk backwards to give ourselves some more room.
Thanksgiving is almost here. So that means insane amounts of football, grotesque amounts of food, and a whole lot of people needlessly freaking out about Black Friday (*Author’s note: unless it directly effects you, in which case: my deepest apologies and may God have mercy on your soul.). But it also means it’s time for people to take a moment out from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to reflect on the things that matter most. And it also means making the single greatest art projects in the history of Thanksgiving: the Hand-Turkey!
So what are the Nebraska football coaches thankful for this year? Let’s take a look and find out.
(*Author’s note: and, as it appears the coaches are also one of the greener staffs in the country, it looks like they reused office paper in an effort to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Now that is caring.)
Burnpoetry 