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First down, life to go
Published: 8/29/2006 10:28 AM
Last Modified: 8/29/2006 10:28 AM

Journalists try like heck to be objective, but I admit that I want TU football player Kedrick Alexander to do well.
Alexander has spent the last two years in exile, in part because an off-the-field misstep got him in trouble with the law.
I had the TU football beat at the time and it was my job to write that Alexander messed up. This is where the public perception of the media is a little bit wacky.
The public believes the media loves to write about dirty deeds because dirt sells papers. But if you were to poll sports writers, you would find that sports writers prefer to stay in press boxes and stay as far away from courtooms and district attorneys as possible. If that sort of thing appealed to us, we would have tried to pursue careers as crime reporters.
The appealing thing about sports is that it is about human achievement rather than failure, and crime is a close relative to failure. (Though sports failure is sometimes compelling stuff, too, or haven't you seen the TV clip that accompanies agony of defeat?)
I saw Alexander at TU's media day this year and I 'fessed up that I was the guy who had to write about his bad news and I told him it was nothing personal -- just part of the job. If you score touchdowns, you get your name in the paper. If you wind up on a police docket, you get your name in the paper. That's how it goes if you are a college athlete.
Anyhow, I told Alexander that I wished him no ill will and suggested that he go win the Heisman. He won't win it, of course, because he's not a quarterback or running back or receiver. But the Heisman Trophy is a statuette of a guy in a stand-up pose and I believe Alexander will make good in his attempt to show he is a stand-up guy.





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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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