MORGANTOWN — It seems to happen every time I get fed up with social media, which is becoming quite a frequent occurrence these days.
If social media would only do what it does best, create neighborhoods for each of us individually where we can go to chat with friends, catch up with childhood buddies, and be entertained and informed with news we could trust, it would be wonderful.
But, alas, it has strayed badly from that definition and it has, regardless of whether you use red or blue crayons to color it with, become untrustworthy, dishonest, biased, political, and a propaganda device that has lost its sense of humor and, in many cases its mind.
However, each time you feel the need to bathe your soul of what you have seen online, there comes a moment where someone or something creates an interesting discussion, and that happened this week.
My social media neighborhood being West Virginia University sports, I was drawn into a conversation that in part I had something to do with initiating. It evolved out of Mountaineers’ quarterback Garrett Greene’s recent assessment of his personal goals this year in a recent press conference.
“The Big 12 championship,” he answered. “If I do my job at a high enough level, we’ll get there.”
It wasn’t said in a boastful manner. It wasn’t sidestepping the personal accomplishments that the questioner sought … such matters of improving his completion percentage from an unacceptable 53% a year ago; nor did it have to do with yards gained, touchdowns scored, or winning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, let alone any hint at Heisman Trophy recognition.
It seemed to be a straightforward, honorable repetition of the team-oriented approach Coach Neal Brown has stressed this season, hanging out the plum of a Big 12 title in a very competitive conference race as the ultimate goal every player should strive for.
Out of that drew a couple of comments from some people I respect, the former All-American offensive tackle from the unbeaten 1988 WVU team Brian Jozwiak, and former publicist Joe Boczek, opinions that talk of a championship run are out of place in a public forum by a player involved in that chase.
Boczek offered this up out of the gate:
“We need to underpromise and overdeliver. Talk of a Big 12 championship should be a part of locker room lore and not put out there to fuel public discussion. Championships are won on the field not in the news media and in the public. Don’t set yourself up for failure. I certainly hope he is right!
Jozwiak responded:
“Joe, I agree, like last season….expectations were in the basement for WVU and we pulled out a strong season with a hearty YEAH!!!…so like predictions indeed are worthless….proof is in Performance!! So let’s not talk about it…let’s start with a W over PSU!!! and then one at a time! So walk the walk!”
I have to admit. I don’t get it.
In this “me first” generation that has developed ever since the 1960s, which we will get to momentarily, this is not only a modest response from Greene, but it was also one meant to inspire and push his teammates.
If anything, it simply said, this team is good enough to win and I am the quarterback of this team, which puts it on me to lead the way to that victory.
We have evolved into a very strange sporting society, one that revels in touchdown celebrations, that likes boastful talk, that is symbolized in baseball, for example, with such a play as the sacrifice bunt losing its place in an offense which worships how far a baseball is hit and demands players attempt to overpower the baseball no matter how many strikeouts it takes to hit one.
Let us for a moment return to the 1960s to find the roots of where we are now.
As the 1960s dawned, the modest type of hero such as Joe DiMaggio or Lou Gehrig was elbowed aside by the more flamboyant Broadway Joe Namath or Muhammad Ali, eventually evolved into Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose and Deion Sanders along with sideline dances and choreographed celebratory routines that players had to have practiced as long and hard as they did their fundamentals.
Namath publicly guaranteed a New York Jets Super Bowl victory and delivered, becoming a legend for it. Ali simply boasted “I am the Greatest” and lived up to it. Reggie Jackson was “the straw that stirs the drink” for the New York Yankees.
We live in an era now that has grown out of Namath, Ali, Reggie, and the like, magnified through the limitless reach of social media.
And our athletes today are not the athletes of Jozwiak’s era. They are professional athletes, weaned on ESPN in a contentious atmosphere out of which grow “heroes” like Stephen A. Smith, Dan Dakich, and others who have created a culture where volume is respected more than sanity.
They are selling themselves as well as their sponsors’ products, be it a car dealership or a video football game. The more of a “personality” they become, the higher their value grows.
Athletic departments now read their financial statements before they read the box scores and when they stick their arm out the palm is always facing up, not to be slapped five but to take in the money necessary to run a $100 million athletic department.
If it was all right a year ago for WVU to publicly complain about being picked last in Big 12 football, why should it not be all right for a quarterback to say he believes his team is capable of finishing first in the conference and that to accomplish it he must be at the top of his game?
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