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Toward the End: Readings, Writings, Football
Back When . . . Cowboys Were Real, Good, and One of Us
Screenshot from Pendleton Round-Up With the July death of Shirley Webster, queen of the Webster ranch and the great love of Shoat Webster, perhaps the greatest of the great steer ropers, Shoat once again loomed as large as life in the old mind of a little boy who had...
Don’t be Dangerous When It Comes to Others’ Lives
Quarterback Baker Mayfield is jeeest a little dangerous but never to his teammates Matt Starkey/Cleveland Browns When Baker Mayfield woke up on the morning of November 11, 2018, “feeling real dangerous” during his first season as quarterback of the Cleveland Browns,...
Guardians: Words Matter in History of People or Person
Beacon Journal Photographer Karen Schiely shows us a Guardian of Baseball Karen Schiely/Akron Beacon Journal Reaction to renaming the Cleveland Baseball Team the Guardians comes down to which side of history a person lands: the personal or something broader, more...
UT President Jay Hartzell Comes from ‘Best-Man’ Stock
UT News Photo As the red dirt shakes and quakes beneath the Oklahoma heart of the Big 12 Conference, its tremors running from Norman to Austin, Texas, the college athletic universe, in particular football, awaits the playing out of what could be seismic change. An...
Still a Soft Spot in My Heart for Clark Hardware
Richard Clark Hands Over Keys to the Lucky Winner of Two Cars Photo Courtesy of Juanita Clark A couple of blocks from the downtown hub of my life, the one that occupied my late afternoons in the 1950s—a newspaper, of course—stood a different sort of business fixture,...
When Social Media Blows Up in Your Face—Get Out
Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash Past flaws and foibles can follow us, wrap us in their tentacles and shake us until we cry. Our sins and flaws are like the past itself. They’re never dead. They are not even past. If anyone doubted Faulkner, social media and the...
The Mystery of the Pink Motor Scooter is Solved—or Not
This 1950s Cushman Eagle is a shade less than pink and with no front panel but resembles my ride Photo from Silodrome.com The Mystery of the Pink Motor Scooter had no precise beginning and may have no conclusive ending. It exists—bright, flashy, significant—in the...
England Loses a Championship and a Piece of Its Soul
Manchester street artist Akse repairs Marcus Rashford mural Screen shot from ESPN.com Racist hooligans on social media and in the streets of England turned The Beautiful Game’s naming failures into pimples compared to their infected-boils-of-a-reaction to three missed...
The Beautiful Game Bears Butt-Ugly Names
If soccer is The Beautiful Game—crowned with its elegant, simple, and yet descriptive title—why didn’t someone, all those years ago in England and America, have the decency to give each of the various football games a beautiful name of its very own? Or, failing that,...
Barry Lewis: Memoir Evokes ‘Friday Night Lights’
The Tulsa World's Barry Lewis (right) and Mike Brown talk with Bixby star Braylin Presley Editor's Note: This column by Barry Lewis, Tulsa World high school sports editor, appeared in The World and online, as part of a column featuring highlights from the World's...