By GINNIE GRAHAM News Columnist on Nov 17, 2012, at 11:21 AM Updated on 11/17 at 11:21 AM
GINNIE GRAHAM
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Frank Deford, long-time sports writer and television commentator, said the worst thing to say about a place is that it has bad sports.
“Not to say you have bad schools . . . but to say you have bad fans is the worst insult to a city.”
Deford was the featured speaker at last week’s Oklahoma Bar Association awards luncheon, humorously weaving in quotes from legendary sports figures and telling stories from his career experiences.
He has spent more than 50 years at Sports Illustrated, where he is currently the senior contributing writer, and regularly appears on National Public Radio and on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”
Among the speech highlights:
*The U.S. is the only country mixing sports and academics in its schools, quoting former University of Oklahoma president George Cross, who said “What we want is a university our football team can be proud of.”
*Likened the notion of amateur collegiate sports to Communism: “It looks good on paper but never works in the real world.”
*About big-time college football athletes: “They are acting as unpaid entertainers who are supposed to support the entire athletic budget. They work all year and should be paid. Football is also a high-risk sport now.”
*”These are called revenue-generating sports. Then why are the only people not sharing in the revenue are the entertainers?”
*Argues the use of agents at the college level should be allowed: “Why not have agents helping these families make the most crucial and life-changing decisions? We need to accept an economic model where the employees can be paid a fair price and be able to solicit legal advice.”
*Arguing the flip side of promoting big-time sports in college: “Because we do mix up our athletics and academics, it serves to make sports so much more important than music, art and literature. It creates an anti-academic climate.”
*Criticized big-time youth sports: “You can’t tell me that at least part of the reason for American boys increasingly performing worse in schools is the continued concentration of sports, and done so by adults at a young age.”
*Fascinated by team sports: “Boys learn to care about each other on teams and that carries over into their adult lives.”
*Quoting Billie Jean King on girls not having team sports: “Women could never approach athletic equity without popular team sports.”
*On girls increasingly participating in sports: “It appears that time may finally be approaching. I’m not sure we can appreciate what that will mean. Women having institutionalized sports should have an important impact on the workplace in years to come.”
His lesson about adults obsessed with sports:
*“It’s natural for children to admire athletes and rock stars. But for adults who continue to hold athletes and sports in such high esteem, well, I learned that the hard way.”
This lesson came early in his career when he wrote an article about legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant and mentioned he was getting older, requiring a lot of bathroom breaks.
“Here, Bear to the people of Alabama was a demi-God and I had revealed he has bodily functions.”
Among those many calls for his head and threats to his person, his favorite call for firing came from a Methodist minister: “Who said that whenever my parents would like to get married, he would like to officiate.”
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