SOUTH BEND, Ind. – They hit the road, and for the first time in six years, the road did not hit back. In fact, what Michigan did Saturday in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus was enough to make Lloyd Carr consider an entire season of away games. They came, they saw, they trashed the place. Shredded gold everywhere you looked. Notre Dame’s ranking as the second-best team in the nation seemed like a typographical error once the Wolverines had finished.
Since this is a new season, let’s try a new approach.
“All we did,” said quarterback Jon Kitna after the Lions’ 9-6 defeat in Sunday’s season opener, “is take the pressure off ourselves today of having to try to go undefeated.”
Ba-dum-bump.
Uh … he was joking.
But there’s something you haven’t heard in a while. And here are some things you hadn’t seen in a while: passes that were strong and on target. A defensive line that swarmed the quarterback. Two blocked field goals. A first-round draft pick who actually dressed for the game.
But enough about the quarterback. Let’s talk about the running back. We spend so much time in Detroit on who’s taking snaps, we forget that our biggest stars have been the men who take handoffs: Billy Sims, Barry Sanders.
And now Kevin Jones?
“Yeah, I thought about that my rookie year,” says Jones, 24. “There’s a tradition here I want to be a part of. But last year wasn’t a big indication of it.”
Tomorrow, we remember.
But today, we lament.
Tomorrow, Sept. 11 – the five-year anniversary – we see the deluge of grizzly images, we hear speeches from politicians, we make vows to avenge those who perished, we make grim promises to fight on in the war on terror.
But today is just as sad an anniversary. Today, in some ways, aches even more.
If Sept. 11 was the day we never saw coming, Sept. 10 was the day we will never see again.
And we miss it terribly.
We miss when you could pull up at an airport without bracing for a military exercise.
In the end, Charles Rogers was a number. Nothing more. He wasn’t a star. He certainly wasn’t a role model. Heck, he was barely a memory, seeing how little he played.
Rogers was a number. His draft number. The No. 2 selection in the 2003 draft. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have expected anything after three subpar seasons. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have argued to keep him after he violated the NFL’s substance-abuse rules. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have blinked when the Lions sent him packing this past weekend.
Next time you think you’re having a bad day, consider this story.
Mo Gerhardt is in a wheelchair. He considers himself lucky. Lucky, because with his particular lot in life – Duchenne’s disease, a form of muscular dystrophy – doctors predicted he wouldn’t live beyond his teens.
Mo is 28. He lives every moment. He is upbeat and funny and a fighter. He insists on his own job and apartment and driving a specially equipped van. He is a sports nut. When he could walk, he played baseball like a demon. Later he took up hockey – wheelchair hockey.
It has been a few weeks since gas prices were the BIG story. This doesn’t mean gas prices have plummeted. It just means, for the moment, our blood pressure isn’t boiling over.
Why not? You still can pay more than $3 a gallon anywhere you look. A year ago, the national average was $2.28. The year before that, it was $1.79. Two years before that it was $1.31.
The profits for Big Oil still are embarrassing. The OPEC nations that get filthy rich from our spending – some of which might like to see us wiped out, if we weren’t such good customers – still are raking in the money.
After Tuesday’s victory, Jim Leyland made a prediction for Wednesday’s game:
“If we pitch better than they do tomorrow night, we’ll have a chance to win.”
And before I left for the ballpark Wednesday, my pal and radio cohort Kenny Brown made his own prediction.
“You going to see Zach Miner pitch? Better get there early.”
It was a good night for faces at the ballpark. You can start with Kenny Rogers. When he pitches, his jaw is as tight as a steel girder. Tuesday night, that jaw was also thick with whiskers and the whiskers were coated in silvery resolve. “The guys tell me the worse I look the better I pitch,” he would say of the unshaven look. “But the more I grow it, the more it shows the gray.”
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