Colts Offseason Moves Parallel 1998

                It’s not the year 1998 in Indianapolis today, but to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, it sure seems like it.

On Tuesday, Irsay and new General Manager Ryan Grigson announced their decision to fire head coach Jim Caldwell, just hours removed from interviewing new potential defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. The firing comes less than a month after Indianapolis wrapped up their league-worst 2-14 season, their worst under Caldwell and worst as a team since 1991. Yesterday’s firing only adds to the long list of Colts offseason moves that have seen Vice Chairman Bill Polian, General Manger Chris Polian, Offensive Line Coach Pete Metzelaars, and Wide Receivers Coach Frank Reich all lose their respective jobs and not to mention Defensive Coordinator Larry Coyer who lost his job mid-season. To make matters worse, the defensive backs coach, Alan Williams, announced today that he was leaving the team to become the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings.

Back in 1998, the Colts were in a similar situation, coming off a league worst 3-13 season and earning the #1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. Jim Irsay fired head coach Linde Infante and director of football operations Bill Tobin in the midst of shaking up the entire organization and starting fresh with the #1 overall pick. That #1 pick turned out to be used on quarterback Peyton Manning out of Tennessee.

So as the Colts stumbled again like they did in 1997, Jim Irsay reverted back to what he’s done before, shaking up the entire organization and firing the appropriate people. No one can blame him for making such bold moves; yet, he must also decide what to do with the #1 overall pick that his team has earned once again, just like they did back in 1998. The slight problem that Irsay faces, as many people know, is that he already has his franchise quarterback in place, something that wasn’t the case 14 years ago.

The question remains on what the Colts will do with that #1 pick and with Peyton Manning but one problem facing Irsay is whether or not Peyton wants to come back to a completely overhauled and aging team. We already know Peyton was “surprised and shocked” by the Polian firing and one can only imagine his reaction to Caldwell’s firing as well. Sadly, a team like the Jets, Redskins, or Cardinals may seem more appealing to Manning simply because they offer him a better chance to win a second Super Bowl. You can’t blame Peyton for wanting to avoid the mess growing in Indy as personnel get fired and big name players like Reggie Wayne and Jeff Saturday contemplate free agency and retirement respectively.

 The bold moves made by Irsay seem appropriate after witnessing his team get embarrassed for a vast majority of the year.  But sadly, those same bold moves may indirectly fire Peyton Manning as well as he looks toward the present while Irsay looks toward the future. There is no shame in handing over the keys to the franchise to a young, talented Andrew Luck, but that same talented individual has yet to win a game in the National Football League in his entire football life. The only thing that is for certain is that the pain in Peyton’s neck has failed to go away, despite the rest and countless hours of physical therapy. At the rate the Colts are going, there might just be a pain in Jim Irsay’s neck too that may never go away.

Torey Fox


High School Basketball at its Finest
PHWVC Continues to Showcase Area’s Top Talent

            For the 12th time in as many years, the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic once again showed why it is truly one of the best high school sporting events in the entire state. In very few instances do upwards of 2,700 people attend a high school event, let alone more than one, but this tournament opens its doors to this amount of people on a Tuesday through a Friday.

            I had the privilege of working with the likes of Jimmy Kendall and Vaso Michels throughout this tournament and was fortunate to witness such an array of great high school basketball games and all the little things that come with them. We saw everything from last second shots, to foul-fests in the fourth quarter, to student-section  rivalries, and a Turkey Run freshman capturing the hearts of many with a three point make to close out a game. Only one place could someone see all this in less than one week with thousands of their closest friends.

            Sadly, the days of packed high school gyms on a Friday night with David and Goliath type matchups like we saw last week are few and far between. Class basketball has taken that away to a certain extent, but without class basketball, the Wabash Valley Classic may not be nearly as big as it is now. Matchups like West Vigo-Marshall and Terre Haute North-Sullivan are the reason we show up and the reason this tournament was created. That is why this tournament is so great. Why else would the men who sat next to me with their seat cushions and popcorn come out all week to Terre Haute North High School each and every day and catch all 28 games without missing a single basket or foul? Because it’s the Pizza Hut Classic.

            Some, especially the ones that showed up late and had to be turned away, will clamor that this tournament should be played at the Hulman Center where 10,200 people can take in this glorious tournament. Yet, we lose everything that this tournament has to offer if that happens. The packed house, feel-the-love, good-ole-days basketball feeling goes out the door with a venue change (Not to mention the money the tournament saves by not moving). So the next time someone grabs you and says that the Wabash Valley Classic needs a change in scenery, tell them to get their earlier, grab a slice (or two) of Pizza Hut pizza, and take in some great, local high school basketball.

Why?

Because some of it truly comes only once a year.

Torey Fox         




IU's Victory over UK Marks the Return of Hoosiers Basketball

Christian Watford will be known for weeks because of his game-winning three point basket over #1 Kentucky on Saturday as time expired, but in the coming years his buzzer-beater will go down as the start of something special in Bloomington, Indiana. 

After being wrecked by a recruiting scandal under former coach Kelvin Sampson, Indiana and its legendary basketball program was left up a creek without a paddle with seemingly no end to its misery in sight. Luckily for Hoosiers fans everywhere, Watford and Head Coach Tom Crean seem to have made those desperate times a distant memory.

After three years, Crean's record in Bloomington stood at 27-66 but strong recruiting class after recruiting class (and not to mention landing Washington's own Cody Zeller) seemed to re-energize a fan base accustomed to not only winning in the Winter, but winning in March as well. Yet, IU had nothing on-court, except for wins over schools like Stony Brook and Gardner-Webb, to show that the program had fully recovered from the troubles of 2008.

That was until Saturday night.

Asked by Dick Vitale after the game on ESPN what the victory meant for IU and it's program, Crean couldn't help but smile and say that the win had already done big things for the program as he pointed towards the thousands of students and fans celebrating on court.

Crean's effort at Indiana has even been noted by his fellow coaches, including Kentucky's John Calipari who said after the game "I hate to lose, but if I'm to lose, losing to Tommy is fine because what he's done here in four years and having to do it the way he did it where you're undermanned and now you're trying to fight...For him to have this happen for him and his family, I'm happy for them. They deserve to win the game."

Regardless of what happens with IU basketball over the course of the next few months, Hoosier fans everywhere can hold their head up high knowing for one shining moment in December, IU was back on top of the basketball world due in large part to Tom Crean and Christian Watford. A national title may not be in the cards for Indiana this year, but with talent like freshman Cody Zeller, junior Jordan Hulls, and sophomore Victor Oladipo, bigger and brighter things are sure to be found in Bloomington.

As for Christian Watford, he called his game winning shot "the biggest moment of his life" but what he may not realize quite yet is that his "biggest moment" may in fact be one of the main reasons why Indiana is back on the college basketball map. 

Torey Fox




Tebow’s Inability put aside with 4-1 mark as Starting QB

It is fair to say that you could characterize me as one of the millions of sports fans who thought the Tim Tebow “experiment” in Denver would fail. It is also fair to say that I could be characterized as one of the millions of sports fans who thought as a starter, Tebow could not
execute a pro-style offense.

Never have I been so right and so very wrong at the exact same time.

Tim Tebow, a first round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft and current Denver Broncos starting quarterback, has played as bad as anyone could have imagined the past five games as a starting quarterback. He has completed only eleven of his last twenty-eight passes and thrown for only 173 yards his last two games. On the contrary, Aaron Rodgers has completed forty-six of his last sixty-four passes and thrown for 549 yards his last two games just to put it into perspective.

Yet, Tebow in some magical way has one thing in his pocket that hardly anyone else in the entire league has. That one thing is simply it. Nobody including Tim Tebow himself has the true definition of it but what we do know is that it is the ability to play practically awful and still win. It is the ability to inspire a team down four points to arguably one of the best defenses in the league, the New York Jets, and create a magical twelve play, ninety-five yard drive to win the game when you were one of eight passing and had only eleven yards rushing the previous quarter! Let us not forget that it is also capable of propelling Tim Tebow to two touchdowns passes in the final 2:44 of the fourth quarter and a successful two point conversion that completed a furious comeback against the Miami Dolphins and led to a game winning Matt Prater field goal in overtime only a month ago. Whatever it is, he has it.

“I like winning,” Tebow said after Thursday night’s 17-14 win over the Jets, “but I wish it wasn’t quite that stressful.” “When we were in the huddle,” he added, “we talked about ‘you want opportunities like this as an offense.’” “We haven’t done anything the whole game, but we have an opportunity to do something special right now.” And something special they did.

It doesn’t matter how you win the game, in my eyes, as long as you do in fact win. Granted, it may be ugly but it is quite effective. The Tim Tebow haters will continue to hate but I hope they look past the one-hop passes, the ineffective runs, and the entire pro-style option offense and respect what Tebow has done to the franchise as a whole. Before Tebow, the Broncos were on the draft clock behind the Indianapolis Colts, and now they have a shot to win the division and make the playoffs. Yes, I said it, playoffs.  

The Tebow haters now bellow that this type of offense and Tebow streak will eventually come to an end. It very well might but I would not put it past Tim Tebow. Why?

Because he has it.

Thank you,

Torey Fox   

The Power of Sports


“The world’s kind of turned upside down, but I think our kids were resilient,” said quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno, son of legendary coach Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno was fired over the phone earlier in the week because of his involvement or lack of involvement in the child abuse case.

Interim coach Tom Bradley added “I think [Saturday] just made the healing process start to begin.”

With words like hope, comfort, and healing all surrounding the football game itself, sports once again proved how valuable it can be in tough situations.

In 2001, just one month after the September 11th attacks, George W. Bush donned an FDNY jacket and threw out the ceremonial first pitch of the first World Series game in New York City since the 9/11 attacks as chants of U-S-A rang down throughout Yankee Stadium. What seemed like a traditional World Series game at the time, turned out to represent the start of a city’s healing process after the worst act of terror on American soil.

The idea of sports and healing also applied to Brett Favre who in December of 2003, on the Monday night after his father’s death, torched the Oakland Raiders for 399 passing yards and four touchdowns on the way to a 41-7 triumph. “I love him so much,” Favre said after one of the greatest performances ever recorded on Monday Night Football, “but I know he was watching tonight.” Once more, the simple idea of returning back to the field of play can mean so much to anyone regardless of the circumstances.

Whatever happens at Penn State, whether it is wins, losses, firings, or investigations, one can only hope that the attention turns back to the entire reason we even care about Penn State athletics, football. The student-athletes on the field when given the proper attention can provide a sense of healing and closure to a week of turmoil that will go down not only in Penn State history but college sports history as well. If given the opportunity, sports and competition has and will continue to ease the pain of many different people, cities, and countries throughout the world and many, including myself, are confident that the same thing will happen at Penn State.

The university is known now for all the wrong reasons, but as time passes, historians will hopefully only see this scandal as yet another bump in the long road of college athletics.

Torey Fox

Bullpen, Inexperience cost AL-Champs

The bullpen giveth, and the bullpen taketh away for the Texas Rangers. What seemed to carry a team destined to vindicate their quick, 5-game loss in last year’s World Series against the San Francisco Giants, quickly turned for the worst one pitch after the other in Thursday’s and Friday’s World Series games against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Through two nights, the Rangers bullpen gave up twelve hits, nine earned runs, eight walks, and three blown saves through seven and one-third innings of World Series baseball. As an entire staff, the Rangers issued forty-one walks which broke a World Series record, not to mention the three walk, two hit-batter fifth inning which gave the Cardinals two runs on zero hits and sealed the Rangers fate in Game 7. Asked about what was the bullpen’s problem was, manager Ron Washington said “I wish I [had] the answer, I don’t. Those are the guys that got us here, they were in a position to take us further, and it didn’t get done.”

Unfortunately, Washington will have to stew over that problem for quite some time, and possibly some of his own decisions made late in these closing games. Washington clearly was all-in for Game 6, deciding against keeping Game 4 ace Derek Holland as a possible starter for Game 7, but instead placing him in the bullpen for Thursday night’s game. A mindset appropriate for a team with zero World Series titles as a franchise but one we all questioned as we watched Matt Harrison get rocked Friday night.

However Rangers fans will be left wondering why the mindset created by Ron Washington did not apply to Lance Berkman’s crucial and possible series-ending at-bat in the bottom of the tenth inning during Game 6. When Berkman stepped in against Scott Feldman, the outfield stood practically on the warning track, a clear no-doubles defense. The strategy as many would assume would prevent Albert Pujols who stood on first from scoring but why would the outfield be so deep with two outs and the team’s first World Championship only an out away?

Why not make Lance Berkman beat you with a bloop single or double to the fence?

Why not make Lance Berkman in the most pressure-filled moment of his career beat you by putting one past the infield?

Why not Ron Washington?

Instead, all Berkman had to do was put the ball in the shallow outfield and he most certainly did.

Washington, and his inexperience in crucial World Series games, played not to lose instead of playing to win during that at-bat which cost him and his team dearly.

How this team responds after two World Series losses will be the talk of the MLB heading into the spring. They without doubt will be the favorite to win the AL West but Rangers fans, players, managers, and front-office execs will not put that atop their list of goals for 2012. The Rangers could be like the Atlanta Braves of the early 90’s, a team that tasted defeat in the 1991 and 1992 World Series, but rebounded to win the Fall Classic in 1995. Or they could be the New York Yankees of 1963 and 1964, a team that lost to the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers in the Fall Classic and didn’t get back to the World Series until 1977, thirteen long years later.

Only time will tell for this talented team in Arlington, Texas.  

Thanks for your time,

   It seems no matter what sporting event I watch, whether its Masters Sunday, the World Series, or the Super Bowl, I always get to see the MasterCard commercials that end with the famous tagline, “priceless.” And every time I due in fact get to see one, I can’t help myself but to stop and think about what my priceless moments have been in my young life. Has it been my trips to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or better yet, has it been one of the vacations or get-togethers my family and I have been able to do? So by the time I start to make a decision and pick out the best one, the sporting action is back on the TV and I completely put aside what I had been doing for the past minute and a half. However, that all came to an end Wednesday night.

My parents and I are just your average St. Louis Cardinals fans. We watch the first week of the season, look at the score once in awhile in the summer, and watch all we can in September and this year, luckily in October. But as we watched Jason Motte record the final out last week in game 1 against the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS, all three of us knew we needed to take the opportunity regardless of the cost (the high, high cost) and see the Fall Classic in person at Busch Stadium. It very well could be the first and last Fall Classic of our entire lives but we knew it was something that we needed to see and something we needed to do to cherish for the rest of our lives, together.

So off we went Wednesday night.

As we sat in seats that seemed as high as the Gateway Arch in front us, the priceless moment that I had tried to determine many times in the past was finally found.

The 40-degree temperature, felt like 80.

The 25MPH wind and blowing rain seemed like nothing.

The drunk 10 rows above us, more entertaining than annoying.

Nothing went wrong, including the result. (A Cardinal 3-2 victory I might add.)

So why do I sit here and ramble about a very fortunate World Series experience?

Just to get everyone to sit down and think about his or her own priceless moment. It doesn’t have to be sports. It doesn’t even have to be with anyone nearby. It can be so many different things it’s unbelievable. But it’s still a priceless moment. And if that priceless moment is already set in your mind and it requires a little more effort or that extra hour of overtime, just do it. Trust me, it’s worth every penny and then some. 

Life’s too short to sit and watch that priceless moment go by.

Thanks for your time,

Torey