Norman Einstein's
ISSUE 09 (02/10)
"A Very Bad Day"
by Corban Goble
[Corban is a writer based in New York City. He is the editor of Epilogue Magazine, a fourth-generation Jayhawk, and a Packers shareholder.]
I'm a grownup now. Or, at least that's something I tell myself. If I believe it enough, maybe it'll come true; enduring beliefs like the deep good in mankind and soul-fulfilling media careers that will one day again promise financial comfort.
Though I often indulge the spirit of my inner child, I've grown out of the many silly superstitions that pervaded youth. That a sweatshirt or pair of socks could dictate a win for my favorite team. That a Jayhawk tournament loss wasn't worth mourning, even if Miles Simon was FREAKING INELIGIBLE. That, despite how sports-centric my young life had been - you see, in Kansas, there's not much else to do, outside of meth and picketing community events with Fred Phelps - there were greater global threads weaving the world's identity: politics, music, art.
As deep as these things may be buried, and as much as you can possibly condition yourself to avoid repeat long-abandoned behavior patterns, an event can strike even the loosest of neurons. In my case, two events, running simultaneously on a day that can only be described as my own personal sports apocalypse.
January 10th, 2010: a Day That Will Live In (Relatively Light) Infamy
For the sake of some background, so you can get to know a little bit about me, I'm from Kansas and attended the University of Kansas for my undergraduate studies in English and Economics. My mother is from suburban Milwaukee and a Packers fan of the highest distinction (shareholder!) imposing this conversion upon my brothers and me from infancy. So, in terms of personal sports affiliations, KU basketball and Packers football are the foundations of my fanhood. When my inner fan looks in the mirror, he's rocking four colors: green, gold, blue, and crimson.
On Sunday the 10th, both the Packers playoff game at Arizona and the Jayhawks non-conference regular season game at Tennessee were scheduled for 3:30 ET, a rather odd assignment for a college basketball game. But I suppose it couldn't have happened any other way.
The Packers rode into to Arizona following a torrid stretch of football. This stretch earned them the acclaim of many of sports television's most prominent talking heads. The fact that these experts often cited extremely irrelevant trends for picking the Packers in the playoffs, like the scope of the previous week's beatdown of Arizona, I ignored; sometime it's just nice to hear someone rhapsodize over one's favorite team. Consider, too, my team's year-long narrative had gone an entire season secondary to the Favre-in-Minnesota media monstrosity, a former friend now reincarnated in that ghastly plum uniform, not unlike Shelley's beast. Favre-in-stein, a horror unleashed on the wintertime Siberia of Wisconsin.
The Jayhawks, my Jayhawks, traveled to Knoxville as the unbeaten #1 team in the country, a ranking largely due to the Jayhawks unholy depth. Tyshawn Taylor, the US National 19 & under team's go-to guy, comes off the bench. Tennessee, recently crippled by the dismissal of a few of its best players (including Tyler Smith, who carried a handgun with the serial number filed off, a puzzling crime due to its dense and multi-faceted illegalness) only brought six scholarship players to battle the Jayhawks. The Jayhawks hadn't really been tested yet most certainly held a generous talent advantage.
Anxiety stymied the entire day's productivity, real or imagined.
Sometimes tiny things trigger the little kid in you. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. That Sunday, I had a good feeling about this retro excitement, part nostalgia, part emotion.
The Games, And Human Nature, As Reflected In Rarely-Read Theses.
When I was in high school, I wrote my senior paper about the issue of good and evil in mankind, juxtaposing Golding's Lord of the Flies and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the latter used mostly for its considerable complexity and depth regarding such. Each sentence was malleable to any particular point you were making, particularly pliable to over-milking and, therefore, permitted a truncated writing and research process. In college, I wrote, more or less, about the same thing, on man's construct of society and social class as depicted Thomas Middleton's plays, man's value as a democratic entity. This is all to say, man's subconscious is something I've often thought about. I have applied it, perhaps perilously, to my own understanding of sport, in that, where tested, my 10-year-old self would emerge, the primal male that once placed everything Jayhawks and Packers quite close to the center of his universe.
I won't do much recap of the games' respective plays, but both contests started rather sourly. The Packers were flattened early by Arizona's passing attack (that Pittsburgh game weeks earlier being an ignored indicator of the Packers defensive limitations), finding themselves down 17-0 in the first quarter. The Jayhawks pulled a "KU student population, early Sunday morning" impression, playing like they were massively hungover and carrying around thirty pounds of weight packed on since their high school days. Both teams stuttered sluggishly, and flirted with getting blown out.
Credit: Tennessee Journalist (Flickr)
Getting blown out is sort of an interesting prospect, in terms of game-induced trauma. In the moment, it's almost better to get blown out than to lose in a close heartbreaker, because you've made peace with reality while the game's still going on. The post-game, that's gravy. You've moved on, learned not to take sporting events where you have no real influence so seriously, patted yourself on the back for maturing and hurdling your childhood hangups, and immersed yourself in a project to take your mind off of the fleeting sense of disappointment. Your evolved, heightened self, unable to be floored by something as pithy as professional sports.
So it could have ended there: my two favorite teams blown out and left for dead. It didn't though. And the inner child kept jivin'.
For about an hour, the Packers and Cardinals traded scores, the Cardinals leading 31-17 in the 3rd Quarter. The Jayhawks clubbed their way back into the game and tied it 33-all at intermission, a misleading score given the Jayhawk's crumminess and perceived sense of total disinterest.
But, both teams clawed back and put themselves in a position to win their contests. The focal point was minutes before 5 PM ET, both teams, due to the merits of a wonderful Packers onside kick and the fourth fouls by J.P. Prince and Wayne Chism placing three walk-ons on the floor for Tennessee. It all seemed to line up perfectly; this wouldn't be a day that lived in (relative) infamy, but a triumph for fanhood, a warm thought to make future losses taste a little better.
Well, That Was Quick
(Now, as you might be aware, the Jayhawks game will end before the Packers game really gets kicking, so the dramatic syncopation is thrown awry. For the sake of the same drama I strive to achieve, I'm going to clumsily align them moving alongside one another, two tragedies existing in the warped space-time continuum that governs my daily life.)
The Packers, against all odds, take this thing to overtime and win the toss, a coin flip called by Charles Woodson who could do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned, on the season. The Jayhawks, down six to eight for most of the half, tie the game at 64-64 with minutes remaining, a development that would certainly tilt the favor to Kansas's fleet of pro prospects as opposed to Tennessee's floor full of walk-ons. Things are looking up.
Credit: Travis Wichmann (Flickr)
That is until...
Less than a minute into overtime, Aaron Rodgers, easily the Packers hero of the game if not the season, was hit and lost his grip on the ball. The ball fluttered freakishly on to his extended foot, a result of being pulled down from behind, causing it to float at the very height of silver platters hoisted by waiters at fancy events. A waiting Cardinals defender immediately scooped and scored for the decisive touchdown.
Eek!
Tennessee's Skylar McBee leapt out of a Tom Wolfe novel to can a three pointer to the tune of an expiring shot clock, sinking the best team in the country, and hitting arguably the biggest shot in Tennessee's less-than illustrious basketball history.
Yelp!
While Cian's phone lay shattered, it's internal sensors no longer able to process the spotty coverage signals sprouting into Brooklyn, I lay on my back on the wooden floor in my apartment. I was there for a while, maybe an hour. The computer eventually made it down there, but it didn't help, as the Internet content churn is recharging in rest for Monday's binge. So, with nothing to distract me (getting distracted being a principal secondary skill associated with writing) I went to writing.
I didn't use much of that here. I don't think much of my writing when I write like a ten-year-old.
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