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Toward the End: Readings, Writings, Football
Can’t Auction Off Pinball Memories Along with Machines
Men of a certain age—middle to dotage—have been known to attempt to turn back their clocks with fast cars, faster women, and even pinball machines with fast flippers. Fast cars can kill a man. Faster women can make him wish he were dead. So except for one small...
Mayfield Memorandum 2: Catchy Spotlight Question
When skill players want the football in their hands, inevitably some ninny will inquire: Are there enough footballs to go around? As if Wilson is going to run short. (The NFL version is made in Ada, Ohio, of course. Everything NFL seems to come back to Ohio. We are...
Not Always an Angel, Doyle Baird Punched Like the Devil
pound4pound.com Photo Doyle Baird (left) guides one of the fighters he helped through the years When Doyle Baird was young, Akron was a tough rubber town, a fight town. Tire builders still stretched the rubber that became the carcasses onto their machines with their...
Best Sooners Ever—Sliced, Diced, and Okie Covered
sooner sports.com photo Don Ursetti always has done his homework and stored it for instant recall in what must be a brain as deep as the Grand Canyon and as wide as the Mississippi River. That, or this all-Akron sports broadcaster has had Google surgically implanted....
Mayfield Memorandum 1: Ready to Go in 2021
Note: Turning the Cleveland Browns’ Season of Promise into one of super success depends on their quarterback, Baker Mayfield. It is always about the quarterback in the modern, pass-happy National Football League. There may be variants, including coaching, or, as the...
What to Remember as a Senior? Your Teammates
Photo courtesy of Melissa Buck Gillman Dempsey Gillman (front row, middle): pride of his grandpa's life Depending on one’s perspective, Dempsey Gillman and his Tulsa Metro Christian Academy teammates would seem to have a high hill to climb—Oklahoma’s idea of a...
Not Everyone Must Play by the NCAA’s Rules—Thankfully
uakron.edu As if the University of Akron football program had not already had its nose ground into the dirt—OK, make that, artificial turf—a former athletic department administrator has caused the NCAA to put its foot squarely on the Zips’ neck and jump up and down...
Will Browns Starters be Prepared to Start the Season?
Even during the most revealing of training camps and preseasons, it can be difficult to impossible to determine what caliber of team will come out of the starting gate when the bell rings and it hits the longer-than-ever National Football League regular-season track....
Clem McSpadden: A No-Bull Guy and His Golden Voice
When they auction off the flotsam and jetsam of a life, especially an important one, the memories that come with the items can prove not only personal but also existential. If I were not at a stage of life when I should be discarding rather than collecting, I might...
Living in Your Head? Beware of Fantasyland’s Trap Doors
Photo by Hayden Scott on Unsplash Oklahoma's gravel road's take me back to yesterday in the dusty corners of my mind Where do you live? For such a simple, straightforward question that everyone has heard and answered countless times, it can be nonetheless...