cover of current Sports Illustrated, November 26, 2007
Dream Season (So Far)
Unbeaten Kansas Takes on Missouri In the Border War and This Time It Matters
Yes, it's THE biggest football game between the schools in history. Period.
Dream Season (So Far)
Unbeaten Kansas Takes on Missouri In the Border War and This Time It Matters
Yes, it's THE biggest football game between the schools in history. Period.
Naturally, it falls to a proud and smart Hoosier grad, formerly one of the regular guests on ESPN's Sunday morning program, The Sports Reporters, Jason Whitlock of The Kansas City Star, to help explain the true significance of Saturday night's nationally-televised ballgame from Arrowhead Stadium. on this weekend full of some of the biggest college football rivalries around.
Just the mere fact that the game even is being telecast nationally in prime time, as opposed to the more predictable choices of -say, Florida State at Florida ballgame at 5 p.m. on CBS, the Alabama at Auburn ballgame at 8 p.m. on ESPN, or even the Virginia Tech at UVA ballgame at noon on ESPN2, given VA Tech.'s status as a national school- speaks to a new era that holds the possibility of ushering in a new era of national respectability for two long-suffering and largely-insignificant football programs.
Football programs that have largely been below the radar for the entire lives of the very high school kids they're trying to recruit, a very tough psychological barrier to overcome, since not all talented kids have tradition as high on their list as perhaps they do playing time.
If even a handful of talented high school kids decide to de-commit from their present oral commitments with other schools and decide to cast their lot with KU or MU, all of a sudden, it's no longer just a fluke or a one-hit wonder with them, and becomes the foundation for changing the way the schools are perceived nationally.
No longer a mere afterthought.
If even a handful of talented high school kids decide to de-commit from their present oral commitments with other schools and decide to cast their lot with KU or MU, all of a sudden, it's no longer just a fluke or a one-hit wonder with them, and becomes the foundation for changing the way the schools are perceived nationally.
No longer a mere afterthought.
Considering the way that other Big 12 and Big Ten schools have long been able to cherry-pick the two states' best players, especially Oklahoma and Nebraska, and spirit them out of state, for the Jayhawks and Tigers to play a tough competitive four quarters of football, with no stupid coaching blunders, while showing some degree of imagination on offense along the way in what promises to be a windy game, might be a way of making that a reality instead of just a possibility.
Being in Bloomington, only a few hours east of St. Louis, I was always aware of the large number of Hoosiers with St. Louis-area roots, at certain dorms, or, in my own case, on floors at Briscoe Quad, people who made their rooting interests plain by their -in some cases- near constant wearing of St. Louis Cardinal baseball ball caps.
And when those St. Louis-area Hoosiers were both smart and good-looking friends, it was much easier to remember their rooting interests.
Like fellow Briscoe Quad resident Valerie Tershluse, she of the dark-haired good looks I've forever been attracted to, or, her older cousin, Mary Beth Terschluse, to this observer, who never saw a preppy at NMBHS despite how popular that look was becoming nationally, a walking and talking advertisement for how great J.G Hook-style classic clothes could look on an already attractive college student.
Valerie was somebody I saw just about everyday my first two years at IU while we both lived at Briscoe Quad, in the hallways and breezeway, and cafeteria and TV room.
And she had friends everywhere, including on my floor, the 4th floor of A building, which is how I suppose we probably met in the first place.
[A happy coincidence was her living on the same floor in the B building, away from Fee Lane, as many of my closest friends, many of whom I'll recount in future posts, like the unforgettably witty Dawn Janet from Elmhurst (IL) -who typed most of my various reports over the years, since I'd taken French for four years at NMBHS instead of typing- and her wonderful roommate Sherrie S. from suburban Chicago, too.
A year later, there was added to the mix my sweet and adorable and very talented friend from Louisville, Jennifer Grimes, an IU Pom squader, whose wholesome, girl-next-door good looks I quite accurately describe on my homepage as being "always such a distraction while sitting underneath the basket."
That floor also was the home of someone whom I shall always have a special place in my heart for, Jacquie Cherbocq, the wonderful woman who made it possible for me to see all of IU's basketball games to begin my life as a Hoosier.
For two years in a row, 1979-80 and 1980-81, she graciously lent me her pink fee receipt so I could purchase both the "A" and "B" schedule tickets at the IU Fieldhouse during class registration, back when the ticket packages were set up so that, supposedly, in the abstract, more students could attend a game.
One package contained the Purdue home game, while the other was either the Kentucky home game if we had UK in Bloomington, or, the best opponent not named Purdue if we were playing UK in Lexington that year.
One package contained the Purdue home game, while the other was either the Kentucky home game if we had UK in Bloomington, or, the best opponent not named Purdue if we were playing UK in Lexington that year.
I've never forgotten Jacquie's kindness to me, especially since she brought me such amazing
That first year, 1979-80, it gave me seats in the third row behind the north basket in our season-ending victory over Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship, after Butch Carter sank some free throws to make it 52-50, my first time ever rushing the court.
The second year, 1980-81, was full of magic since it was the the year we won the NCAA basketball tourney, beating North Carolina.]
The second year, 1980-81, was full of magic since it was the the year we won the NCAA basketball tourney, beating North Carolina.]
Because of that proximity I spoke about, I saw a lot of Valerie, and she never failed to have something very interesting on her mind to share, along with a kind word.
Later, after I'd made the move out to Colonial Crest Apts. on 703 W. Gourley Pike, I saw even more of her, as she moved out there as well.
A big selling point? Their pool scene was, in a word, amazing!
One thing I recall in particula rwas that Valerie and I seemed to be on the same wave-length in many ways, some odder than others.
For instance, she always seemed to head out to The College Mall at the very same time of the month as yours truly.
Being car-less back then, Valerie often spirited me away in her car from the Mall on bitterly cold or snowy days while I was waiting for a late-arriving IU bus.
Being car-less back then, Valerie often spirited me away in her car from the Mall on bitterly cold or snowy days while I was waiting for a late-arriving IU bus.
For whatever reason, good timing perhaps, I often seemed to catch Valerie wearing her martial arts outfit, either before or after the class, which, to these eyes, only made her athletic great looks even more appealing.
Sadly for me, I suppose, for as long as I knew her, Valerie always seemed to be dating someone I already knew pretty well, and as far as I know, she didn't have an identical twin out there in the world. Not that I didn't look for that twin on campus anyway!
Back when I was thinking about the kind of smart, sweet and interesting women I wanted so badly to meet when I was filling out college applications in North Miami Beach, though I hadn't yet met her, Valerie was exactly the sort of woman I was picturing in my head.
The very kind that seemed practically nonexistent in the very superficial, blase world of NMB in the mid-to-late 1970's I was living in, and wanted so much to escape.
The truth of the matter is that what I hadn't counted on, with Valerie, as with so many of the female friends I eventually made at IU, was their high degree of self-assurance, self-confidence, and ability to take care of themselves.
Now that's a combination I've always found appealing!
Obviously, I've never forgotten how deeply Valerie imprinted her great personality on me, merely by being herself.
A couple of Valerie Tershluses in an area does wonders for morale and its quality of life.
Boy, could South Florida ever use a couple thousand Valeries these days.
[SouthBeachHoosier Trivia: The Cardinal baseball team was the first sports team I have any recollection of actually rooting for, largely a result of my living in Memphis as a small child during the Cardinal's glory era in the mid-60's, when they appeared in the World Series of 1964, '67 and '68, winning the first two with one of my all-time favorites, #45, Bob Gibson, whose fluid pitching motion I mimicked for crowds without any kind of prodding whatsoever.
That, plus, the simple reality of living in the same nice upscale apt. complex as then-Cardinal catcher and Memphis native Tim McCarver, whose kids were my age.
I'll have more on McCarver in a future post, but it's ironic that I lived in the same place as him for a bit, and then, moved to an area just two miles miles away from where North Miami High Pioneer alum Steve Carlton grew to fame, before becoming his teammate with both the Cardinals and, more famously, with the Phillies, when he was Carlton's pet catcher, and someone whose Topps baseball card I was always getting in my pack.
One of my favorite covers of Sports Illustrated as a kid in that era was one photo of the Cardinals' simply titled, "$100,000 Infield."
cover of Sports Illustrated, September 4, 1967That St. Louis Spirit
The Cardinals' Tim McCarver
cover of Sports Illustrated, October 25, 1982
[SouthBeachHoosier Trivia: As it happens, for reasons not worth getting into here, I was among the select fortunate few who were able to attend the sneak preview of The Big Chill at the IU Auditorium, a few weeks before it opened nationally, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085244/.
Of course, part of that cap-wearing I referred to earlier was simply self-identification with the very good Cardinal teams of that era.
Certainly it's always easier to wear your team's cap when they're doing well, something I grew to appreciate growing-up in such a demonstrably front-running area like South Florida, where people were -and remain- always looking to jump onto the latest bandwagon, fad or craze, be it sports teams, fashion, music or otherwise,
I recall like it was yesterday the mood on campus before and during the Cardinals-Milwaukee Brewers World Series of 1982, a series that, to me at least, largely split the IU campus in half their rooting interests, since there were so many Hoosiers from Wisconsin, though nowhere near, of course, the number from the St. Louis area.
I recall quite specifically among my St. Louis and Milwaukee-area friends along the Third Street sororities, like Tri-Delt, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Alpha Phi, there emerged a sudden interest in sporting ball caps on great-looking heads that I'd never seen before.
Maybe they'd sported a golf cap or something a few times when I'd seen them on a parents weekend or something, but never anything with an actual team on it, save IU, of course.
I remember being involuntarily drafted a couple of times for trips to the nearby College Mall or downtown in search of Cardinal or Brewer gear at sporting goods stores, and the split on campus being the subject of lots of news stories in the ids , the IU student newspaper, for a week or so.
Of course, when you have a cow that gives good milk, keep milking!
Still, while fewer in number, The Brew Crew fans compensated for their smaller numbers by being very loud.
Still, while fewer in number, The Brew Crew fans compensated for their smaller numbers by being very loud.
You might even say, ahem, boisterous!
If you're like me, a big sports fan for as long as you can remember, you tend to notice things like team ball caps right away, especially when waiting online at the quad cafeteria with nothing but time on your hands.
Or, like a foreign correspondent doing research, while taking a break from the usual cast of characters at your dorm, and visiting friends and embedding at their quad cafeteria, with its strange and foreign ways, yet still full enough of Hoosier cuties wherever you looked to remind you all over again of just one reason why you were so happy to be a Hoosier.
It was probably much the same way when Hoosier grad and Oscar-winner Kevin Kline was attending IU.
Or, like a foreign correspondent doing research, while taking a break from the usual cast of characters at your dorm, and visiting friends and embedding at their quad cafeteria, with its strange and foreign ways, yet still full enough of Hoosier cuties wherever you looked to remind you all over again of just one reason why you were so happy to be a Hoosier.
It was probably much the same way when Hoosier grad and Oscar-winner Kevin Kline was attending IU.
cover of Sports Illustrated, October 25, 1982 (Lonnie Smith sliding into second base as shortstop Robin Yount throws to first base.)
[SouthBeachHoosier Trivia: As it happens, for reasons not worth getting into here, I was among the select fortunate few who were able to attend the sneak preview of The Big Chill at the IU Auditorium, a few weeks before it opened nationally, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085244/.
The scene when Kevin's character, sporting goods store entrepreneur Harold Cooper, is shown
getting ready for a run, and then you suddenly see him wearing the ubiquitous grey University of Michigan t-shirt, was the one and only time the enthralled IU audience booed.
(Though everyone knows Michigan is a great school and all, the less said about the way that Hollywood has made that particular t-shirt a perennial on actors and actresses on myriad TV shows or in films, the better!)
My first thought after seeing that scene was of Northwestern grad MacLean Stevenson constantly wearing an orange U of I cap in his portrayal as Col. Henry Blake in the beloved TV series, M.A.S.H., http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0829004/bio and
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=MASH&x=11&y=6 since I was enough of a TV and film
junkie in those pre-internet days, to already know he'd gone to Evanston.
(As it turns out, Stevenson died on my birthday eleven years ago.)
I think this bit of Illini knowledge was first dropped on me by fellow Briscoe Quad resident and good friend, Lolita Zwettler, yet another of my female friends blessed not only with a warm and lively personality, a facile brain that could demolish poorly thought out arguments in an instant, but also, not incidentally, as I could never quite forget when I was with her, the kind of smoldering, dark-haired great looks that always made me weak at the knees.
Like the first time I ever saw Ava Gardner in a really good film, One Touch of Venus,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040669/ and saw exactly what all the fuss must've been about in the 1950's!
See http://imdb.com/name/nm0001257/ and
I could never quite get out of my head how much her first name must've been the source of discussion when she was in high school, even among those not entirely sure of the narrative of Nabokov's controversial novel, and the ensuing great film starring Peter Sellers, James Mason and Shelley Winters, which I've only seen about two dozen times. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/
Less for the remake with the brilliant Jermey Irons and Dominique Swann, with Swann perfectly cast as the mis-placed object of his lust and affection. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119558/
Now as it happens, to connect the dots here, my friend Lolita was from Champaign-Urbana, the home of U of I, where at least one of her parents was at the time, if I recall correctly, either a professor or administator at U of I, hence her knowledge of this TV trivia about a beloved character.
Trivia -Actual Hollywood talents who went to U of I: actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and director Ang Lee.
When I lived in Evanston a few years later, and asked around about this diss to Wildcat pride, I was continually told that the reason Stevenson was forced to wear the I for Illinois was because the show's producers thought that the country wasn't quite familiar enough with the NU to 'get it' if he sported the purple"N "I'd became so accustomed to seeing wherever I went, but would get the orange"I."
All I could of think was the antagonistic bumper stickers I always saw on my drive home with friends for spring break to Ft. Lauderdale, once we got near Chatanooga, and started sharing the road with students from Ann Arbor, East Lansing and Columbus.
Stopping at the same gas stations, McDonald's and rest stops, and me, noticing the infamous Michigan State Spartan bumper sticker dig at their arch-rivals in Ann Arbor's helmet:
"What you call Maize, we call corn."
That always mades me laugh, no matter how many times I saw it!]
Besides Valerie Terschluse and her cousin Mary Beth, I knew a fair amount of talented and amusing Hoosier friends and acquantances from Kansas and Missouri over the years, a partial list of the most notable being the following:
-David C. (Dave) Whitmore from Overland Park, KS, my great friend of whom I've already written so much about on the SBH homepage.
-IU soccer phenoms Mike Hylla and Dave Boncek, of St. Louis, who were twice members of an IU NCAA champion team, including the game I was at in Ft. Lauderdale, the eight-overtime victory.
Dave and Mike lived in the same apt. complex as me, directly across from Memorial Stadium, and not surprisingly, like all IU soccer players, or at least the vasy majority of them,
were personable and funny, which always made rooting for them very easy on those rare times when we were actually trailing in a game.
Since they had a very particular talent for showing some crazy soccer skills, they were very adept at always kickin' the ball around near the pool -basically, just below my apt.- while simultaneously noticing -along with me- who among the bevvy of beautiful IU coeds lying around the pool still retained their spring break tans.
Yes, that a was a very nice place to live!
(I think the daughter of IU team doctor, Dr. Brad Bomba lived there as well, if I recall.
Dr. Bomba was an All-American end when he was at IU in the mid-'50's.)
Still later, when I was living in Arlington County, in the mid-90's, I was fortunate enough to have a smart and personable housemate from Kansas in an apt. on Pershing Drive, just off Washington Blvd., down the street from Fort Myer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ft._Myer
named Derek Schmidt, who may well have been THE most honest person I ever met in Washington in the 15 years I lived there.
I'll have more to say about Derek in a future post, but for my purposes here, I'll just mention a couple of quick bio details to give you an idea of what kind of terrific guy he was.
When I moved in with Derek in 1994, he was working as an LA for Kansas Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, and then later, worked for Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -whom I dislike- all while going to Georgetown Law School at night.
Try doing all that and having a social life, too!
More recently, Derek, the former editor of the University Daily Kansan, http://www.kansan.com/ was elected to the Kansas State Senate.
Derek's self-evident character, intelligence and comity are such that he was appointed by his Republican colleagues as "chairman of the Legislative Post Audit Committee, which is the "watchdog" committee that oversees the work of the legislature's professional auditors. Derek used the chairmanship to ferret out government waste and inefficiency."
After he was re-elected in 2005, they were so impressed that they voted him the
Senate Majority Leader!
It goes without saying, that whatever our various political disagreements might be from time to time, Derek almost always used facts to form the basis of his argument and personal persuasion, not hyperbole or the selective use of history, which as you might imagine, were the mainstays of Washington discourse, sad to say.
Those policy disagreements notwithstanding, I could vote for Derek without any reservations whatsoever, and only wish that his sort of personal honesty and straight-talking were more common in the political corridors of South Florida and Tallahassee than the current reality.
Not that anyone is looking to SouthBeachHoosier for political endorsements!!!
Weather forecast for Saturday night's game at Arrowhead: cold with lows around 26 and with a 40% chance of snow -http://www.nbcactionnews.com/weather/default.aspx
Before the game rolls around, check out these links and educate yourself a bit in ways that you won't if you read the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
We're one day away from Armageddon at Arrowhead, and we're all excited, we all want to be a part of it. We want the Kansas and Missouri football programs to entertain us, make us proud and settle a feud that has been marinating, bubbling and erupting for more than 100 years. Only one thing can ruin Saturday night's historic clash.
Hype for Saturday's Border War started with January's announcement of the game moving to Arrowhead, picked up inertia as Kansas and Missouri steamrolled through their season and is now a runaway train of exhilaration. But buildup for next year's game at Arrowhead, the second in the two-year contract, will grow even bigger.
Jeremy Maclin should have grown up here, in this troubled neighborhood where gangs roamed the streets and the cupboards were often bare. He probably should have failed here, too.
The biggest clash ever in the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi is Saturday night as the Jayhawks play the Tigers at Arrowhead. At stake is the Big 12 North title, a chance to win the conference football crown and perhaps even playing for a national championship.
CAMPUS SLANT
Video blogs from The Star's beat writers
McCollough & DeArmond KU-MU: Armageddon at Arrowhead
Howard Richman Show-me weekend for K-State
McCollough & DeArmond KU-MU: Armageddon at Arrowhead
Howard Richman Show-me weekend for K-State
SouthBeachHoosier's prediction: Kansas Jayhawks!
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