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By Tom Archdeacon
| Saturday, October 4, 2008, 11:19 PM
College sports teams always live by the mantra: “There’s no place like home.”
But that’s never been more true than now, where rising jet fuel costs and extra baggage fees are bookended by the dire economic crisis to make road games a financial nightmare.
Here’s just one example.
When Ohio State went out to play Southern Cal last month, it took two chartered flights for its players, coaches, support personnel and boosters. The cost was $346,000. In the past, the fuel surcharge that was tacked on top of that was no more than a couple of thousand dollars Bucks’ finance director Ben Jay told the New York Times. This time it was $24,200.
Whopping bills like that are taking a toll on OSU, but with a $115 million athletic budget this year — the largest in the nation — it can absorb it a little better than some schools.
Imagine if you’re one of the majority of programs just scraping by or already running in the red?
The Times detailed some of this in a story Saturday and told how some cash-strapped programs are not sending all their players on trips and others are thinking of shortening their seasons. Just one less road game saves a bundle.
I can only fathom the hurdles facing a program like the University of Hawaii.
As for the University of Alaska at Anchorage, every road game it’s teams play requires a flight. It’s closest opponent is Fairbanks and that’s 310 miles away.
The hockey team makes several trips to Minnesota this season and travels to Colorado, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Michigan, plays two games in Fairbanks and two more in Wasilla.
According to the school’s athletics director Dr. Steve Cobb, the average athlete logs 25,000 milles each season.
And you know how you get charged if you show up at the airline ticket counter now with more than one checked bag? Imagine a hockey team…or, worse, a football team.
With withering costs like there are now, the landscape of college sports is going to change. Some programs may fold. Others will scale back. And student athletes — if they do make the travel roster — will learn to pack light.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Sunday, September 28, 2008, 12:00 AM
Thanks to an e-mail from reader Ellen Vogel, I found out that U.S. Army Capt. Ivan Castro — blinded by a mortar blast while fighting in Iraq — left Dayton last Sunday morning with more than just the medal that had been hung around his neck the day before after he’d finished running the U.S. Air Force Marathon in 4 hours 16 seconds.
Here’s what Ellen wrote:
“I happened to be at the Dayton airport early Sunday morning for a flight. Capt. Castro was on our plane. He boarded before I arrived. While I was waiting to board, a group of maybe 10 to 12 motorcycle riders came to the gate with flags and wearing their motorcycle gear.
“Capt. Castro was asked to come back off the plane. … He walked off not really understanding why, but then he was greeted by the Harley motorcycle group.
“The president of the group said they didn’t want him to leave Dayton without a proper send-off. ….They thanked him for his service and presented him with a shirt and pin. When he reboarded, he was greeted with applause.”
After hearing Ellen’s account, I got in touch with Capt. Castro, who was at his desk back a Fort Bragg. N.C., and I asked him to fill in the details.
He was surprised the story had gotten out and said for me to fully appreciate it, he wanted to give some of the back story.
“I love Harley Davidson motorcycles, — I just love ‘em ” he said.” I always wanted one and my wife finally said I should go get one, but that she wouildn’t ride with me. She said it was too dangerous. That’s when I decided to get a boat instead, but then, soon after that, I got hurt.”
That was two years ago and these days, instead of riding a Harley, Capt. Castro collects Harley Davidson shirts and Hard Rock Cafe caps everywhere he goes.
When he got to Dayton two days before the marathon — his wife Evelyn wouldn’t arrive until a day later — he asked the TSA represntative who helped him deplane at the airport if there were any Hard Rock hotels or Harley shops around.
She told him there was a Harley place, but while he was here he ended up with too many commitments and wasn’t able to slip off in search of a shirt.
“But Sunday when my wife and I go through security at the Dayton airport, there is that same TSA agent,” Castro said. “She handed me a bag and inside was a Harley Davidson shirt. I couldn’t believe she’d done that for me. That was pretty special.”
And it was about to get even more special than that.
He and Evelyn boarded the plane and, no sooner were they in there seats, when a flight attendant got on the PA system and asked for the Castro family to come to the front of the plane,
“Evelyn went to find out what was going on and she came back bawling her eyes out;” Ivan said. “Right then I was ready to kick some butt and find out who made my wife cry.
“She finally goes, ‘No, there’s a brigade outside that wants to see you.’
“When I got out there, my wife described the scene to me. It was the Patriot Guard Riders, the motorcycle crew. They’re all veterans. They were wearing their leather and most of them had their flags open . My wife said the head guy looked like Kenny Rogers.
“He told me they just wanted to thank me for serving my country and for not quitting. And then they gave me a shirt. Well, I stripped off the jacket and shirt I was wearing and donned their shirt. Then I took pictures with them.
“It was awesome, just very moving. I didn’t have any idea how many people were out there, but then they started clapping and I realized there was a good crowd. And when I got back on the plane, everybody in there gave me an ovation, too.”
And the night before — some six hours after he’d finished running the marathon with the help of guide Lt. Col. Fred Dummar — Ivan, his wife and the Lt. Colonel had all gone to El Meson, the popular Spanish cuisine restaurant in West Carrollton run by the Castro family. The Castros here are no relation to Ivan, but they have a Columbian roots, as does Evelyn.
“Not that was a real American hero,” said El Meson’s Bill Castro. “I think he had a good time here.”
“We had a great time there and I ate and ate and ate,” Ivan laughed. .
“I’ll tell you something, I’ll never forget Dayton. Everybody treated me great. There are some real good people up there.”
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Friday, September 26, 2008, 11:33 PM
One third of the way through the college football season, here are some questions swirling around the Heisman Trophy race.
— With USC’s surreal meltdown at Oregon State Thursday night, what happens to the bid of Trojans quarterback Mark Sanchez? Remember Tim Tebow won last year with four losses.
— Who is the best quarterback in the Big 12 — Missouri’s Chase Daniel or Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford? And does that make him the best player in the country?
Daniel has 12 touchdowns, just one interception and has completed 76 percent of his passes. At one point last week against Buffalo, he completed 20 in a row.
Although the Sooners were off last weekend, Bradford’s stats are still off the charts. In three games — directing the nation’s top scoring offense (54.7 points per game) — he has completed nearly 80 percent of his passes, has 12 touchdowns and two interceptions.
— What about a repeat for Florida’s Tebow? Although his numbers pale next to the Big 12 duo, he just beat Tennessee for the third straight time in his career. He’s passed for 489 yards, run for 118. His five passing TDs come with no interceptions.
— Do Javon Ringer’s workhorse numbers for Michigan State — 143 carries, 669 yards, a best-in-the-nation 11 TDs — make him an equal of Georgia’s Knowshon Moreno, who has 69 carries for 455 yards and 9 TDs against better competition? Moreno is averaging 6.6 yards per carry. Ringer, the Chaminade Julienne grad, 4.9 But I think Ringer is just going to get better and better as the season goes on.
I vote for the Heisman in December. Right now here are my top ten contenders:
1 — Chase Daniel, Missouri quarterback
2 — Sam Bradford Oklahoma quarterback
3 — Tim Tebow, Florida quarterback
4 — Knowshon Moreno, Georgia running back
5 — Max Hall, Brigham Young quarterback
6 — Javon Ringer, Michigan State running back
7 — Mark Sanchez, USC quarterback
8 — Jeremy Maclin, Georgia wide receiver.
9 — Graham Harrell, Texas Tech quarterback
10 — Colt McCoy, Texas quarterback
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Monday, September 22, 2008, 10:21 AM
To all the “so-called” Ohio State fans who booed Todd Boeckman Saturday, you showed yourself to be a classless bunch.
Your actions stained a day which should have been nothing but a celebration of a promising new talent’s debut at the helm of the Buckeyes.
Cheer new quarterback Terrelle Pryor, the highly-acclaimed freshman. He deserved it for leading OSU past an over-matched Troy team.
But shower Boeckman with scorn?
That’s a new low even among the twisted few at OSU who think it’s cool to spit on Michigan fans and torch trash piles and old furniture and parked cars after big victories.
On a day when he already had to be crushed — he’d lost his job and his dream —Boeckman enters the game for just two plays, throws an incompletion and gets treated worse than O.J.
“Hey, we’re just kids,” Ohio State defensive lineman Lawrence Wilson said afterward. “We’re not professionals. There is no way adults should treat us that way.”
I don’t agree with the “kids” part — guys this age are fighting in Iraq, working in factories, married and beginning to start a family of their own — but he’s right in that this was no way to treat somebody like Boeckman.
There is no more loyal, no classier, no more likeable guy on the Bucks roster than the sixth-year player from St. Henry.
When OSU showed interest in him when he was coming out of high school — but didn’t want to give him a scholarship right away — he passed on other full rides and came to Columbus for a year as a regular student.
He then red-shirted a year when the Bucks’ wanted to position him for their future.
He supported Troy Smith and watched — without saying a negative word — as the Heisman quarterback starred on the field and sometimes misstepped off of it.
When the Bucks brass fell head over heels in love with Pryor, he stoically soldiered on and made a point of taking the Pennsylvania phenom under his wing as soon as he hit campus.
And after the game Saturday, Boeckman again was a class act when he assessed the day and praised Pryor.
I agree with the person on the Bucknuts message board who assessed Boeckman this way:
“He took over in 2007 on an offense that lost Smith, Pittman, Ginn, and Gonzalez. He won at Washington, at Penn State, vs. Michigan State and vs. Wisconsin before struggling down the stretch. In ‘08 he lost his only playmaker allowing defenses to exploit our average O-Line, and our WRs, who are not the playmakers that Holmes, Ginn, and Gonzo were.”
Boeckman went 13-3 as a starter. He’s already earned his degree, is working on his masters and he’s never been in trouble while at OSU.
You boo a guy like that?
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Friday, September 19, 2008, 06:30 PM
By Saturday, most places around here figure to have their power turned back on, but one noticeable exception will be the Big Ten.
The glow coming from the once preeminent football league is now more flickering candlelight than center-stage Klieg lights. These days the conference is overrated and under-powered.
Think not?
Then explain Ohio State, the Big Ten’s poster program, getting chewed up and spit by USC last Saturday night. Then there was Illinois, after having Missouri ring up 52 points on it, having all it can handle with Louisiana-Lafayette.
Minnesota barely escaped Northern Illinois and, as for Michigan, well, the Wolverines are but a shell of their old selves: Roughed up by Notre Dame, lose to Utah at home and have a tough time with a visiting Miami RedHawks team that’s looking real shaky itself this season.
Minnesota will counter that its 3-0, but it may play even more non- conference patsies than the Buckeyes.
Other conferences do the same, but in the Big Ten — where you have perennial stumblers like Northwestern and often, Indiana and last year 1-11 Minnesota — you can end up with nearly half a schedule full of weak sisters.
And what does that get you?
Ohio State losing its last three big games on the national stage — Florida and LSU in the past two BCS title games and USC last weekend — by a combined score of 114-41. In those three losses the Bucks gave up 1,087 yards and turned the ball over eight times.
You get USC pushing around Illinois in last year’s Rose Bowl. You get Appalachian State coming into Ann Arbor and stunning the football world.
You get the Big Ten losing more bowl games than it wins the past few years. You get OSU 0-9 against SEC teams in bowl games.
A similar point to this was made by Indianapolis columnist Bob Kravitz this week. His story drew some lively debate and then there was this comment from an e-mailer called Smitty2:
“Question — What do you get when you combine big slow white guys and the “I” formation?
“Answer — Big 10 football and Notre Dame.”
Saturday, Ohio State will try to remove itself from a week as the butt of football jokes and reposition itself for the season.
The Bucks will do so with a healthy dose of Terrelle Pryor, the stand-out freshman quarterback who handled himself pretty well last Saturday night in the Coliseum.
He may well be the answer at quarterback, but I hate to see come at the expense of St. Henry’s Todd Boeckman. There’s not a finer, more loyal player on the Bucks’ roster. There is no one I like better on the team and I’ve known him for just about a decade.
Granted whoever is at quarterback Saturday afternoon, the Bucks should be able to push aside Troy without too much of a sweat.
But in a season when you’ve already played 1-AA Youngstown State and Ohio University, what does another game like this do for you? Two in one season is plenty. Three is a joke. It’s starting to look like the Dayton Flyers non-conference basketball schedule.
Sure there are some real challenges ahead for OSU. The Bucks at Wisconsin Oct. 4 and hosting Penn State in the Horseshoe three weeks later.
And if OSU handles those challenges — which I think they will — they may even been in another post-season BCS game.
Then they better hope they avoid the SEC.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 09:31 PM
Two of the most treasured prizes in all of sports are an Olympic medal and a Super Bowl ring.
They’re so hard to get and — as proven again this past weekend — so easy to lose.
When I heard about Olympic swimmer Brendan Hansen losing the gold medal he won in Beijing on a Sunday flight to Texas — after attending what must have been one hell of a Saturday night bachelor’s party for his buddy back home in Philadelphia — it reminded me of some other incidents where Olympic and Super Bowl hardware has been lost, lifted, and, once, nearly grabbed back at make-believe gun-point.
When he and his wife returned home one night and caught three burglars in the process of lifting their jewelry — including his Super VI and XII rings — Gil Brandt, the former Dallas Cowboys’ player personnel director, stuck his hand in his coat pocket, pretended he had a revolver and yelled “Freeze!”
One guy did and he was permanently subdued when Gil’s wife returned from a neighbor’s house holding a very real and very loaded pistol. But the other two guys fled and took the rings with them.
Over the years several Olympians have had their medals stolen.
West Milton’s Bob Schul, the only American ever to win the Olympic 5,000 meters, said his gold medal from the 1964 Games In Tokyo was stolen in a break-in many years ago when he lived in Oakwood.
In 2,000, a taxi driver at Heathrow Airport stole the briefcase of British rowing champion Matthew Pinsen. Inside was Pinsen’s gold medal. That guy was caught.
Paul Rosen, the goalkeeper of Canada’s championship sledge hockey team at the 2006 Torino Paralympic Games, had his gold medal stolen at a charitable event in Toronto’s Downsview Park. At the time, he was signing autographs to raise money for spinal cord research.
Rosen’s plight was headlined in local newspapers and broadcast on television. What worked best, though, was a public plea to the thief from Don Cherry of Hockey Night in Canada.
A couple of nights later, Toronto postal workers found the gold medal after it was dropped into a mail box.
Over the past few years, Australian Olympians have been especially hard hit. In 2003, Lauren Burns’ taekwondo gold medal was stolen. Two summers ago thieves broke into the Perth-area home of Australian field hockey player Katrina Powell and stole a safe that held 10 medals from the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and the World Cup. A week before that Australian pole vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva had her Olympic silver medal stolen from a safe at a business in a Brisbane suburb.
As for Hansen, he noticed his medal — won as a part of the 400-meter medley relay team where teammate Michael Phelps got his record eighth gold in Beijing — was missing from his backpack when he got off the plane in Austin.
He reported it missing and has since told reporters: “For about 18 hours, I was sweating bricks.”
The medal was returned Tuesday by a woman who had found it on the floor in the back of the plane. She had contacted authorities, who eventually got word to him.
Some of these stories have especially heart-warming endings. None more so than the one involving good friends and fellow University of Southern Cal teammates Duncan McNaughton and Bob van Osdel.
Both were competing in the high jump at the 1932 Olympics. McNaughton represented Canada, van Osdel, the United States.
With the bar at 1.97 meters, Van Osdel spotted a flaw in McNaughton’s technique and told him how to correct it. McNaughton listened and cleared the bar and won the gold medal Van Osdel missed his jump and took silver.
The following year, when McNaughton’s gold medal was stolen, Van Osdel — by then a dentist — made a mold from his silver medal, poured gold into it and sent the replica medal to McNaughton.
New England linebacker Tully Banta-Cain, a rookie on the Pats’ Super Bowl XXXVIII championship team, left his 14-karat, white-gold ring with its 105 diamonds on a rest room sink at a Providence, R.I. mall.
When he realized what he’d done and rushed back, it was gone.
“He was sick,” Marilyn Light, the mom of Greenville’s Matt Light, the Pats’ veteran offensive lineman, once told me. “He spent the whole next day at church — praying.”
Eventually, the prayers were answered when a Waltham, Mass., man who found the ring called the Patriots — after first showing it to friends and sleeping with it under his pillow for a couple of days.
Former Chicago Bears scout Jim Parmer knew exactly where his ring from Super Bowl XX was. While playing with his grandkids in the lake next to his Texas home, he’d felt the ring slide off his finger.
He hired a scuba diver, who searched for days and came up empty. Finally, Parmer bought the guy an $1,800 metal detector and within a few hours, the ring was found.
And then there’s the story of Walter Payton — the late Hall of Fame running back for the Chicago Bears — who was giving a presentation about integrity and honesty to a high school gathering.
During his talk, Payton handed the Super Bowl ring to some of the students in the auditorium and told them to pass it around so everyone in the crowd could see it.
By the time Payton had finished his talk, the ring had disappeared.
Five years later, it mysteriously was returned.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 09:28 AM
OXFORD — If you were to put a face on what the Miami RedHawks went through against upstart Charleston Southern, it would have to be the tightly braided visage of sophomore receiver Eugene Harris.
He personified Miami’s effort Saturday, Sept. 13, at Yager Stadium.
Early in the second quarter, his momentary gaffe on a punt return — waggling his hand to wave teammates away so he could field the ball and return it well past midfield — caused his effort to be wiped out.
“I forgot there’s a new rule where you can’t do any hand signals,” he’d shrug afterward.
Then there was the third-quarter catch that took him well into Charleston territory where he promptly fumbled. Six plays later the Buccaneers scored again to put them up 27-17.
Yet those two miscues were nowhere near as glaring as the flub sandwiched between them.
Midway through the second quarter, Miami had the ball on the Charleston 5-yard line when quarterback Dan Raudabaugh found Harris coming across the back of the end zone all alone.
Harris led the ‘Hawks in receptions last year. After the first two games this season, he was the only receiver with a touchdown catch. So when Raudabaugh saw him, he was certain he had a score.
“I figured the ball was going right where I wanted it … so I headed over to the sidelines and was about to give Coach a high-five when he says, ‘He dropped it!’
“Eugene looked at me and his eyes were as big as … ” The quarterback shaped his hands like a saucer: “He was stunned he couldn’t do it.”
Harris agreed: “I was so anxious to get the ball. I was ready to celebrate with the team, too … And when I came to the sideline (Raudabaugh) just slapped me on the helmet and said, ‘Get ‘em next time.’ And believe me, I knew we needed something.”
That’s an understatement.
With the two setbacks to end last year and two more — against Vanderbilt and Michigan — to start this season, Miami had lost four in a row.
But falling to Charleston Southern, a I-AA — or as they’re officially known now, a Football Championship Subdivision team — would be Miami’s worst loss, maybe, since losing to DePauw in 1944.
The Buccaneers have never beaten a Division I school. They’ve played their first three games this season on the road. At home they practice on the front lawn of their school because their practice field is still being refurbished.
And yet against all those odds, they came into Oxford and outplayed, outcoached and, most noticeably, outhustled Miami through much of the game.
And that’s when Harris became the focal point again.
Late in the third quarter, he saw another Charleston Southern punt headed right at him.
“I knew I had to do something … right now. And when I got the ball, I saw I had just two defenders to beat and then there was great daylight ahead.”
And with a couple of jukes and some big blocks down the left side of the field, he found that daylight and scored, cutting the Buccaneers’ lead to three — and instantly revitalizing his own team.
Miami would score twice more and win, 38-27.
“It was good to see him bounce back and lift us,” Miami head coach Shane Montgomery said. “He could just as easily have worried about it and kept his head down.”
Instead, Harris looked up and because of it you saw his face afterward. Beneath the braids was the look of relief, the faint smile of victory.
It was the face of Miami.
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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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