“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg!” — ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Reality is a hard taskmaster. A slap in the face. A huge dose of what IS, not what is hoped for. We saw a lot of it in the sports world in the past week.
“Tiger’s Back” screamed the headlines all of last week after Tiger Woods finally won a golf tournament, his first in five years.
Tiger back? Not so much! Woods lost his seventh consecutive Ryder Cup match, continuing a dismal record against the Europeans. Woods has played 36 Ryder Cup matches and won only 13 of them.
The reality is, even when Kansas gets Big 12-caliber play out of its quarterback — which hasn’t been often — its defense simply isn’t good enough to keep the Jayhawks in the game — at least in Big 12 competition.
Offensively, KU and quarterback Carter Stanley were good enough to win last Saturday as they hosted Oklahoma State for Homecoming.
Defensively, well, they got trashed. Defense was supposed to be a strength of this Jayhawk team but they’ve seldom been able to get off the field. They can’t stop the run and they can’t stop the pass.
Trouble is, there’s not much else left to defend!
The reality is, the Kansas State Wildcats have got the opposite problem that befuddles Kansas: Their offense is not up to Big 12 standards. In the season-opening, near-loss to South Dakota, we all assumed the poor offensive showing was just a fluke, another of Bill Snyder-coached teams that got out of the gate a little slow.
Now, nearing mid-season, this pony is out of the gate slow and is still in a trot! Everyone seems focused on the quarterback controversy as the cause.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is that the offensive line is not blocking anybody, especially at critical times in the game. Alex Delton or Skylar Thompson. Skylar Thompson or Alex Delton. The problem lies not there but in the trenches!
If that offensive line had the testiness, the fire, that Bill Snyder showed in snapping back at reporters this week, we wouldn’t be having this conversation!
The reality is, there is nothing desirable to be gained by “miking”-placing a microphone on a player or coach-during a football game.
Networks, PLEASE stop this inane practice!
It comes off as phony, prepared and scripted and , certainly, not informative. I don’t need to be included in the dressing rooms for the pre-game speeches either. If you’ve ever been involved in athletics and ever sat through a coach’s pre-game pep talk, well then, you know what I mean. Just the ball game folks, just the ball game!
CHALK TALK:
— Another week of coasting for the Hoisington Cardinals as they travel to Minneapolis before the BIG game at Phillipsburg. Cardinals 38-7.
— The sports news media is certainly “in love” with Patrick Mahomes and our KC Chiefs. I didn’t know if it was Superman, Star Wars or Moses they were describing on Monday Night Football!
— Former New York Yankee manager, Casey Stengel on why he had bed checks for his players: “It’s not that players have sex the night before a game, it’s that they stay up all night looking for it!”
— I know it goes against the grain, but I just don’t see K-State fixing that offense. Baylor 30, Wildcats 20.
— Kansas cannot possibly score enough points to keep up with the points that their defense will allow West Virginia to put on the scoreboard. Mountaineers 46, Kansas 13.
— Former Yankee Reggie Jackson came to be known as “Mr. October” for his World Series exploits but that didn’t include fielding, something he did not excel at. He once said, “The only way I’m ever going to get a Golden Glove is with a can of spray paint!”
— For the third week in a row, Great Bend enjoys a home fotoball game. This time it’s Andover Central that will try to shut down the big-play offense of the Black Panthers. Not going to happen. Great Bend 39, Andover Central 17.
— Both Nickerson and Larned come into Friday’s encounter shorthanded due to injuries. Larned has been plagued all season, missing a number of key players. It has even caused problems in the junior varsity games because the Indian varsity has had to bring players up to play in those games, leaving the JV shorthanded. In a battle of the injured, Larned earns its first win of the season, 21-15.
Buddy Tabler is a guest columnist for the Great Bend Tribune and his views don’t necessarily reflect those of the paper. He can be reached at budtabler@gmail.com.
