As someone who grew up reading Sports Illustrated religiously every week, I knew something about a guy in Texas named Blackie Sherrod who was the sports editor of a newspaper there that seemed to send lots of really good writers to SI. Do not hold me to this list because it is from synapses that have not fired in a while; but I believe that Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake, Ron Fimrite, Frank Luska and Gary Cartwright all emerged from the tutelage of Blackie Sherrod. You can hold me to this; all of those writers – - whether or not they were “Sherrod grads” – - were outstanding writers.
Back in the 90s, once the Internet came into existence, I ran across a comment attributed to Blackie Sherrod about the best of the next generation sportswriters. He named Sally Jenkins – - Dan Jenkins’ daughter demonstrating the power of genetics – - and Bernie Lincicome as his favorites of the next generation. I had never heard of Bernie Lincicome but was able to find him at the Chicago Tribune and started following him there and subsequently at the Rocky Mountain News about ten years ago. When The Rocky Mountain News folded, Bernie Lincicome started a blog; and as soon as I found it, I put it on my “Favorites List”.
However, the blogging stopped fairly quickly when this note went up on a sidebar of the blog labeled “Thought of the Day”:
“In the movie ‘Julie and Julia’ the character’s food blog did not become legitimate until a story about it appeared in a newspaper. It takes newspapers to authenticate anything, so if newspapers would just ignore blogs, there would be no more blogs, including this one.”
However, Bernie Linciome’s “Tweets” do show up on the blog and he has tweeted a Winter Olympics glossary. So that gave me an idea for today’s rant. I am just going to be lazy and let Bernie Lincicome and a few other sportswriters who have had snarky comments about the Winter Olympics games write 90% today’s rant for me. I will merely intersperse a brief comment here and there. Hey, I’m retired; I’m allowed to just mail it in once in a while…
So let me start with two entries from the Lincicome Glossary for the Winter Olympics:
“Nordic Combined: This is, of course, Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
“Biathlon: Ski awhile and shoot awhile, ski awhile and shoot awhile. From this, ski masks first became popular in liquor store holdups.”
Personal comment: Help me out here because I really do not get figure skating. In the pairs skating competition, the team that falls down the least number of times gets the gold medal, right?
Professor Lincicome has a different way of looking at figure skating:
“Figure Skating: The winner gets a gold medal and millions to tour in evening clothes while the silver medalist gets to be Daffy Duck.”
Personal comment: Thirty years ago, it was commonplace for people to call for “gender determinations” on putative female athletes from East Germany and/or Bulgaria. You may recall that there were some behemoths on those country teams. Today, I think that it is only political correctness that prevents people from demanding “gender testing” on male figure skaters. Just saying…
Back to Bernie Lincicome for four more glossary entries:
“Luge: Competitors are called sliders. A double slider is a Wendy’s with cheese. Skeleton is an X-ray of luge.”
“Bobsledding: If race cars had no wheels and no roof and no reason to be shoved down an icy chute, they would be bobsleds.”
“Snowboarding: The chief danger is enhaling secondary apre-ski smoke, which gives a whole new meaning to the term joint press conference.”
“Curling: A big stone is shoved around until the beer is cold.”
Personal comment: One of the reasons given for dropping softball in the Summer Olympics was that the contests were not very competitive – - and truth be told, they were not. However, if that rationale carried the day, how did the IOC keep women’s ice hockey on the menu? The only outcome more certain that some of those women’s ice hockey games is what will happen to Bluto as soon as Popeye The Sailor eats his spinach…
Here are some more glossary items from Professor Lincicome. Pay attention, these will be covered on the final exam…:
“Alpine Skiing: Where you arrive at the slopes in a BMW.”
“Nordic Skiing – - Where you arrive in a Volvo.”
“Freestyle Skiing – - Where you are dropped off by your mother.”
“Ski Jumping – - Where the law of gravity is applied equally to everyone but Finns.”
“Cross Country Skiing – - This is what a golf course is used for in the wintertime.”
Meanwhile Steve Rosenbloom had this comment in his blog on the Chicago Tribune website relative to the US men’s ice hockey victory over Switzerland:
“The Yanks were lucky; the Swiss guard the Vatican more diligently than their slot.”
Finally, I can slide home on this rant by citing two items from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times related to the Winter Games:
“One bobsled event features four men together sliding across ice,” noted Brad Dickson in the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald. “In Omaha during winter, we call that a carpool.”
“TNT’s Ernie Johnson, on corpulent co-host Charles Barkley’s dream of running with the Olympic torch: ‘You wouldn’t have to worry about it going out.’ “
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…