Football
Preseason Mags Tainted With Imposter Contributors
By John PorentasThere are some activities that, to be done properly, require a certain ambiance and setting.
Every year I finally break down and look at some of the preseason football magazines. The ritual usually includes generous amounts of junk food and an icy cold adult beverage. That's just the way I've always done it. It's the only way I know how to do it. This year, however, that all got complicated.
When baseball season ended I resolved to finally, at long last, lose some of those ugly pounds I've been packing on for oh, the last five or six years. Honestly, I had reached maximum density, and it was time to do something. Since June 1 I've shed about 25 pounds. Over that time nary a chip has passed my lips, nor one drop of foamy, frothy beverage. But as I sat down to write about the preseason mags, the words wouldn't come. I thought about it, and figured it out. A trip to Kroger for the purchase of a pint of Cookies and Cream ice cream, a bag of Lays Kettle Cooked potato chips (original flavor) and a 24-ounce, ice-cold can of Molson Canadian put me in the mood to get started. Now that the ice cream is gone, a glass of ice cold beverage has been poured and the bag of chips have been ripped open I feel totally prepared to delve into the mags I picked up a Kroger. Ahhh. Life is good again, even if its only for a day.
Kroger had a couple of mags that caught my eye. One was called "Buckeye Battle Cry", a Scarlet and Gray mag that promised to tell me everything I needed to know about the Buckeyes. The other was all Maize and Blue and called "Hail to the Victors" and it promised to tell me everything I would need to know about Michigan. Each was 112 pages. I sat down for 224 pages of enlightenment and empty calories. What followed was a Twilight Zone experience.
I began by thumbing through "The Victors and was stopped mid-chomp on my chips. The swallow of Molson's I was savoring nearly came out my nose as I stared at page 39. There in "The Victors" was a story about Ohio State football. A Buckeye story was startling enough, but whoever put this magazine together found a guy by the name of "Thomas Orr" to write it. The SOBs had co-opted the name of former the-Ozone columnist Tom Orr. This poser calling himself "Thomas" Orr even made a lame attempt at copying Tom's style. The title of the column was "Ohio State 2008, Deal with it America," the kind of thing the real Tom Orr would write.
I was seething. The gall of this "Thomas" guy to try an pass himself off as an equal to our Tom. I read the column carefully and found all the tell-tale signs of forgery. There were far too-few commas and way too-many hyphens to be our Tom's work. After seeing Tom's work for all those year I know how to recognize it, and this was clearly a lame attempt of an imposter. This bum even tried to copy's Tom's meticulous attention to every detail of all things Buckeye on the football field - and very nearly pulled it off. He got into minute detail about every position of the 2008 OSU football team. He even went for an east-coast analogy as only our Tom could do when he compared the Buckeyes to the Buffalo Bills, then underscored that thought at the end of his column when he slapped Michigan fans in the face with a repeat of the theme of his title. "The Buckeyes are indeed back. Deal with it America," this identity thief concluded.
It was a shocking experience made all the more shocking when I realized I had polished off most of the Molson and had read just five pages of the 224 I had in front of me. I decided to just take in the highlights of the rest of "The Victors". I was genuinely amused when two-consecutive articles actually featured little Xs and Os explaining the genius of the new brain trust at the U of M. Little Xs and Os in a preseason magazine? Please. The highlight came in the article beginning on page 65 written by somebody named Michael Elkon. Elkon chronicled the early results of what he called the "top coaches" when they took over football programs. The "top coaches" on his list included Steve Spurrier, Mack Brown, Bob Stoops, Nick Saban, Pete Carroll, Mark Richt, Urban Meyer, and (drum roll) Jim Tressel. A nice little table at the end of the article showed that all the "top coaches" had significant success in two years. The implication was clear. If Rich Rodriguez wants to be a "top coach", he has a pass on just one season in Ann Arbor, then has to measure up. Talk about putting a monkey on somebody's back.
The Molson and the chips were dwindling so I started through Buckeye Battle Cry. It was pretty mundane stuff, nothing I hadn't seen before, though I did enjoy the piece by Matt Markey on Brian Harline and the column by Doug Lesmerises on OSU's finances. Lesmerises cracked me up with the line "Tressel is the face of the program, but the rest of the athletic department and its donors have given Ohio State sports a pretty rockin' bod." Nice Doug. Wish I had come up with that. Doug's piece was also accompanied by a nice little pic on page 70 of the WHAC under construction. I looked at the photo credit, and it was another Twilight Zone moment. Jim Davidson, the-Ozone.net? It had to be another name rip off. I turned the page again, and was totally stunned. The title was "In Rod They Trust" and the author was someone posing as Tony Gerdeman. There was not nearly enough Molson left for me to cope with this.
I almost made another trip to Kroger for another tall Molson, but had an epiphany that made the trip unnecessary. I started to read the column, and knew immediately that this could not be our Tony. The piece was about Michigan for crying out loud. Our Tony could never be confused with somebody who could write about Michigan! Whoever this guy was droned on and on and on about the Wolverines with page after page of detailed facts about the personnel in Ann Arbor and about Rodriguez. Naw, couldn't have been our Tony. This was clearly a Michigan shill and another lame attempt to lure us in by using the name of a good Buckeye to talk about the Wolverines.
I chuckled a little at a combination of articles that began with some recruiting reports, then ended with a good piece by Jason Lloyd on the ability of Tressel's staff to win games by taking "three-star" and "under the radar" recruits who proved to be a lot better than the recruiting gurus predicted. Lloyd pointed to James Laurinaitis, Kirk Barton, Malcolm Jenkins, A. J. Hawk, Santonio Holmes, Brian Robiske, Anderson Russell, Chimdi Chekwa and others as examples. It was a nice counterpoint to the previous recruiting articles that relied on the gurus.
The publication really impressed me when I found an article beginning on page 101 by Jack Park. I knew Jack really wrote it because it was all class and was just jammed-packed with detailed facts about the 1968 team and the super sophs. I was set to really give this mag my endorsement but then noticed an article on page 55 that almost made me lose my Molson. Some hack wrote a piece about a bunch of Buckeyes standing around nude in the shower discussing their football careers. All the class that Jack Park had brought to the magazine was suddenly undermined by this whacko. Writing about nude men in the shower? You gotta be kidding me. You'd think these guys could find some real writing talent if they want to be in the sports mag business.
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