Sitting on the dock of the bay, or in this case Mullett Lake in northern Michigan, eight guys who enjoy golf sank into Adirondack chairs to talk sports, life and more sports.
We missed our annual golf getaway last summer, when COVID-19 cut away at the essential fabric of in-person interaction. Communicating to a Cleveland Browns fan over Zoom that you’re not convinced Baker Mayfield is the answer doesn’t prompt the same heated three-dimensional debate.
On this night, the Milky Way unfortunately lay hidden behind a cloud ceiling, but warmer-than-normal temperatures meant the brew crew could sip Woodford Reserve (double oaked, thank you) and smoke cigars into the wee hours, which given our ages meant 10:30 p.m. Don’t laugh, kids. Your time is coming.
Ground rules were established. No talking politics, but religion was fine. (Think about that: As a society, we have reached a point where discussing God is safer and more civil than discussing government). Also, keep it clean, but not too squeaky. And facial-contorting laughter is mandatory.
Topics ranged from spiritual to superficial. “What is your deepest fear?” one high-handicapper asked, which brought answers of bankruptcy … relational rejection … bodily decay … and not living out a life that replaces selfish ambition with servanthood.
Another so-called golfer tossed out a favorite movie line, which led to a group dissection of the all-time best films, which revealed the counterintuitive reality that people with high IQs can love “Dumb and Dumber.” Go figure.
Eventually the conversation turned to sports, as it always does. What do you think of the 12-team playoff? Do you pay attention to the NBA? Lower.com Field looks really cool. Will Justin Fields succeed in Chicago? Baseball needs to stop gimmicking itself to death.
To be clear, most of the guys are grumpy “get off my lawn” types. But subsets exist under an umbrella of old-school thinking. To wit: For every two complaints that “NIL is going to ruin college sports,” there was a dissenting voice pointing out that amateur athletics haven’t been amateur for decades.
As stogies burned into stumps, the consensus view of this rumpled collection of CEOs, sports writers, doctors and nonprofit community organizers was that college athletes should be able to make money off their name, image and likeness.
“It’s only fair,” said one of the few break-80 golfers, as heads nodded.
The NCAA’s automatic transfer rule, on the other hand, sparked a near-unanimous “nay” vote.
“You mean to tell me an athlete can transfer once for whatever reason?” one curmudgeon muttered. “So what happens when the coach yells at him too many times? See ya!”
One dockside duffer — ahem — attempted to explain that the pendulum in college sports is overcorrecting as it swings back through the middle, which is what happens during culture change. For whatever reason, we prefer living on the extremes. Or maybe the extremes prefer telling us how to live?
Regardless, for more than a century the NCAA held the upper hand against athletes (or student-athletes, as the adults in charge are required to call them). It has taken awhile — 52 years to be exact — but what Curt Flood started in 1969 by greasing the skids for free agency is finally finding a foothold in college athletics.
“Yes, and look what free agency has done to professional sports,” one of the agitated dock sitters said, rising quickly from his Adirondack, which would have been an impressive feat even without a glass of bourbon in his hand.
It doesn’t require eight men out to state the obvious, that free agency has impacted pro sports more than any change over the past half-century. Freedom of movement that benefits the athlete forces fans to relearn their team rosters each season, which chips away at the close relationship between team and town. The reason free agent outrage has softened through the years has more to do with fan resignation than open-armed acceptance. It turns out that resistance is futile.
“We’re not returning to the days of the Big Red Machine, when Cincinnati players felt like part of your family,” a sad dock denizen muttered.
And yet on this strip of wood jutting into the lake, all agreed that sports remain worth watching. Worth playing. Worth discussing. For all our complaining, there is more good than bad to be found on the fields and in the stadiums and arenas.
Beauty can be found outside those athletic cathedrals, too.
The cynical assumption is that every college athlete wants to get rich from NIL. But not so fast. Not everything is about selfish gain. Case in point: Florida State offensive lineman Dillan Gibbons, an MBA candidate who played at Notre Dame as an undergrad, started a GoFundMe on Thursday to raise money so disabled friend Timothy Donovan can watch him play when the Fighting Irish face the Seminoles in Tallahassee on Sept. 5.
The GoFundMe campaign, which had raised more than $36,000 through Saturday afternoon, will supply funding for Donovan and his family to fly to the game, as well as for lodging and meals. Any extra funds will go directly to paying for Donovan’s medical expenses.
The Michigan motley crew had returned to Ohio before Gibbons created his GoFundMe page, but I can speak for the group when I say, “A toast to you, Dillan. We’ll drink to that.”
roller@dispatch.com
@rollerCD
