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Toward the End: Readings, Writings, Football
Football Integrity? ‘Our Boys’ Has It in Spades
Even as others heap praise on this football season because of two closely contested College Football Playoff (CFP) semifinals that, for a second remarkable year, included a team not among the usual suspects, I avert my eyes and hold my nose. From my wizened...
The Perfect Deshaun Watson Suspension Gift
According to advertising email, this "Full Body Massage Chair" is for sale at a most appropriately named big-box store. Browns fans might want one for their unavailable quarterback as he sits out 11 games, as mandated by the NFL. Good women who provide legitimate...
Watson can’t massage this with mixed messages
QB1 has dropped everything and left the building. See y'all in December for Game 12 Matt Starkey/Cleveland Browns With the finality of Deshaun Watson’s heightened punishment for violating his massage therapist victims and the National Football League’s personal...
WriterL the Book Continues the Writing Journey
Largely and rightly, Stuart Warner’s new book, A Place Called WriterL: Where the Conversation Was Always About Literary Journalism, celebrates teaching and learning that has elevated narrative nonfiction in the hierarchy of writing. It also reeks of loss. It could...
Mayfield Memorandum 33: Browns QB Victim
There'll be no more Thumbs-Up for Browns from Baker Mayfield Matt Starkey/Cleveland Browns When Baker Mayfield found himself trying to win the hearts and minds of the Cleveland Browns who owned the first pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, Mayfield went for the bomb. He took...
Scott’s Bud Wilkinson: A Late B(l)oomer of a Book
Magic City Books in Tulsa, Oklahoma, featured John Scott and his Wilkinson book magiccitybooks.com John Scott is anything but a slow study yet it took him years to complete his marvelous archetype of learned sports biography. He began Bud Wilkinson and the Rise of...
Mayfield Memorandum 32: NFL ain’t Bean Bags
Maybe new USC Coach Lincoln Riley forgot to teach OU quarterbacks everything usctrojans.com photo Before he unceremoniously dumped the Oklahoma Sooners for USC and the lure of LaLa Land, Lincoln Riley had become known as a Quarterback Whisperer. Usually if a...
Mayfield Memorandum 31: Sitting in Judgment
The Supreme Court of the NFL is the General Manager's Office Photo by Connor Betts on Unsplash The National Football League can appear a heartless realm: From teams that did face-plants short of even the shallow end of NFL mediocrity to those who embarrassingly...
Mayfield Memorandum 30: When Winning=Losing
Baker Mayfield gives a hand to Case Keenum who knows his pain Matt Starkey/Cleveland Browns National Football League coaches like to claim that their goal is to put their teams and players in situations that provide them the best opportunity to succeed. But...
Winter Comes to the Lion of the O-Line
Longtime Brown Doug Dieken comes to the end of the line John Reid/Cleveland Browns Before he ascended into the heaven that is the Cleveland Browns radio broadcast booth, Doug Dieken played a hallowed position: Left tackle. It is the one spot along the offensive...