Jacksonville Sports News, Sam Kouvaris - SamSportsline.com

“Personal Foul” on the Dutch

I guess we should just be amused when people who don’t know anything about America try and come up with reasons why Americans are, well, Americans. We are somewhat iconoclastic, doing things our way in our almost 240 years as a nation. We drive on the other side of the road than the British. Our horse racing goes the other way, specifically to create an independent state of mind for “the colonies.”

We’ve developed our own sports, some of which we’ve exported to the rest of the world. Basketball is an international game. Baseball has a footing in Central and South America and in Asia. Football has a following, but it would be a stretch to call it “international.”

My European friends call the games we play the “entertainment sports.” To most of them, if it’s not futbol, F1 or Moto (motorcycle racing) it doesn’t count.

Other countries have their specialties. The Irish follow hurling religiously. Australia has it’s own brand of football. And the French have a sport that resembles bocce ball called Petanque. In fact, their biggest tournament was played in Jacksonville in the past two years.

So I suppose I should have just laughed it off when Dutch speedskating coach Jillert Anema on an American cable network during the Olympics, blasted Americans for focusing on what he called “foolish sport.”

“You have a lot of attention for foolish sport, like American football. You waste a lot of talent, athletic talent, in a sport where it’s meant to kill each other, to injure each other. …and when you compete once every four years, with talent, with a few lone wolves, who are skating, you can’t beat the world, it’s no way.”

I was amazed that the “reporter” asking him the questions let him get away with that, just smiling and saying his comments would be considered “blasphemous” in the US. She laughed when she said, “Americans love their football.”

So he continued.

“You’re [the US] is so narrow-minded, and you waste a lot of good talent in a sport that sucks,” he added.

It would be easy to call Anema “misguided” but he was clearly using this platform to slam the States at will.

Unacceptable.

Perhaps he should have been reminded of Shani Davis’ success in the past two Olympics. Or Apolo Ono’s medal haul in Vancouver. Maybe he’s forgotten about Bonnie Blair. Or he wasn’t around in 1980 when the single greatest feat in Olympic history was achieved by American Speedskater Eric Heiden. Heiden won all five gold medals in speedskating at those games, from the 500 to the 10,000. That’s akin to somebody winning the 100 meters and the marathon in the same Summer Games. He set 4 Olympic records and one world record at those games for good measure.

“Coach” Anema should be congratulated for the success the Netherlands scored in Sochi. Speedskating is a national sport in his country of nearly 17 million people. But he should also be reminded that it’s a good thing we’re not serious about speedskating as a nation.

With our more than 330 million people in the States, I’m sure we could find a few who might be able to rival the Dutch in just about anything. Imagine if there was no American football and those athletes turned to speedskating instead.

Our national team would be made up of guys like Maurice Jones Drew in the 500. Chris Johnson in the 1000. Megatron looks like a good fit for the 1500. Larry Fitzgerald could probably handle the 5000 with Tony Gonzalez or Vernon Davis in the 10,000.

So Coach, stay home and stay under the radar until every 4 years you can grab some global glory. Because if we decide we’re going to be good in your sport, you’ll be playing for second.

Jacksonville Sports News, Sam Kouvaris - SamSportsline.com

NASCAR: Looking To The Past To Find The Future

It was about racing.

From the inception of what is now known as NASCAR through the beach driving in Daytona and onto the 2.5 mile tri-oval through the rule changes designed for speed and safety and all the way up to about 2000, driving at Daytona was all about racing. Finding speed was always the key, either by being better than the rules or just bending them a bit.

Walking through the garage area you were just as likely to find the drivers elbows-deep in the engine under the hood as you were seeing them on a slider under the chassis. They knew the car. Most of them helped build them. The car was an extension of who they were. If it didn’t feel right on the track, they’d whip into the garage, jump out of the drivers window, unlatch the hood and grab a wrench.

If you wanted to talk with Richard Petty, he was probably going to be talking to you while using a grease rag to wipe his hands. Cale Yarborough talked about driving that “MC Anderson Valvoline Buick” as if he was piloting a supersonic jet. And in some ways he was. “At 180 you have time to do this,” he told me as he jerked the imaginary steering wheel to the right. “At 200, you’re on it already.” Dale Earnhardt was elusive and almost made a game of disappearing and then all of the sudden being in the car and rolling onto the track. Walking through his garage one afternoon during Speedweeks after practice I found him sitting on the floor, by himself, leaning up against the wall.

“You OK?” I asked

“Yup,” he responded without looking up.

I figured I’d take a chance and sat down next to him. He never gave me a glance.

“Learn anything out there today,” I said after a minute or so of silence.

That’s when he looked right at me and said, “Learned I don’t have enough car to win.”

What do you say to that? So I just sat there. And so did he. I suppose contemplating how to make the car faster. After a short while, he got up and walked away.

“See ‘ya,” I called after him.

“Yup,” he answered without turning back.

You knew who had the best chance to win before the green flag even dropped. Certain cars had money; everybody else was scraping it together for the race.

While NASCAR was the first sport to embrace sponsorship as part of the “game,” the drivers knew how to fit it into the conversation as part of any sentence.

The “STP Pontiac” and the “Wood Brothers Ford” were part of the lexicon of the sport. They knew what kept them driving. And they knew it was their relationship with the fans that kept the attendance high, the merchandise sales going and the payouts increasing. That’s why “the King” would sign autographs ’till the last person was happy. Why Cale called to me across the garage and asked, “Where you been boy?” when I moved from Charleston to Jacksonville and he no longer had a Charleston TV station connection he could watch from his home in the Palmetto State. When NASCAR couldn’t figure out how to keep the crews in line when it came to following the rules, they plucked the guy most known for skirting the regulations to police the rest of the teams. They hired the crew chief who was driving them crazy looking for ways to “get around” the rules.

When their most popular driver died at Daytona on the final lap, NASCAR revamped their whole safety structure, requiring a safer cockpit for the drivers and even changing the cars, trying to move the sport forward.

They’re raised and lowered spoilers, put restrictor plates on the engines and gone through a half dozen “generations” of cars looking for safety and speed but still trying to find that “racing” heritage that made the sport what it is today.

So many fans I know have tired of the pack racing that happens at Daytona. It’s an aerodynamic race now. While drivers used to shift 1,000 times during the 500, now once they’re up to speed, their foot is on the floor all the way around the 2 ½ miles.

The sport is still driven by the personalities of the drivers. They’re all fast, hundredths of a second separating the first from the 43rd qualifier. Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin won the qualifying races, contested at night for the first time on Thursday. Both admitted they have fast cars but said, “Everybody’s fast. Anybody can win. Honest.”

While the spectacle of “The Great American Race” will carry the day as Luke Bryan performs and the Air Force Thunderbirds perform the flyover we can only hope the racing will be as exciting.

Jacksonville Sports News, Sam Kouvaris - SamSportsline.com

Jax: An Events Town

While attendance at the MLS exhibition on Wednesday night between Philadelphia and New York was down because of the weather, that’s no indication of the passion for “the beautiful game” here in Jacksonville.

When the NASL had a team in North Florida in the early ’80’s it was relocated from Boston and kept the name ‘Tea Men’ despite calling Jacksonville home. That’s only because the Lipton Tea Company was the owner and ran the team from afar.

“We had no business being in places like Jacksonville, Atlanta and Tampa,” one former NASL executive said recently in explaining why the league folded.

On the surface, he’s right. As a professional sports league mostly fueled by ethnic followings in major cities, the NASL struggled to find a footing in places where American football as well as baseball, basketball and hockey were already established. To attract a crowd that wasn’t in town to see the New York Cosmos, whole retinues of minor league style promotions were in play, drawing scant attention from most of the sporting public.

But here, the Tea Men had a following that understood the game.

The crowds in Jacksonville were decent, anywhere from 9 to 17-thousand rattling around the Gator Bowl. But they were passionate and knowledgeable, and they were there for every game. A pair of English stars, Noel Cantwell and Dennis Viollet lead Jacksonville’s NASL effort, bringing in a blend of American, European and South American players to compete. It was a quaint, fun time with a big-time feel in a small-time town.

But it laid the groundwork for so many things to come, whether it was the USFL, the NFL or the Super Bowl. It was part of a dream.

Billy Joel said at his concert last month that it was fun to be back in Jacksonville because the first time he was here “you could smell it coming before you got here.” As the paper mills and the chemical plants disappeared and the quality of life improved, there were more and more queries about the viability of a real professional sports team calling Jacksonville home. Joel’s comments dated him back at least 30 years.

Oh how things have changed.

There will be a NASL team in town next year, with the announcement of their name and logo expected Tuesday morning at the Landing. More than 44,000 showed up for a “friendly” between Scotland and the US last year.

We’re an events oriented town, and if a team with “USA” emblazoned across their chests is taking the field (or pitch in this case) we’re going to show up. Think back to the buzz around the Rugby League match between Leeds and South Sydney a few years ago. It became “the thing to do.”

That’s why one of the final friendlies before heading to Brazil for the World Cup for Team USA should be played here.

Yes our stadium field is too small for an official ‘qualifier.” (A situation that can be remedied with about a $5 million investment for detachable seats in the four corners of the stadium floor) but if you want to send our boys off with a bang, let them depart from here. An early summer game as the jumping off point for Brazil could mimic the weather in that part of South America and would create a buzz in town that would attract at least 50,000.

Outside of Seattle, nobody attracts that kind of crowd.

Make it an event, bring in “our boys” and it’ll be an incomparable evening.

Jacksonville Sports News, Sam Kouvaris - SamSportsline.com

National Signing Day: “Mark Your Calendar!”

It wasn’t quite ten years ago that you could sense a spike in the interest surrounding what was happening on National Signing Day. Formerly reserved for what were called “recruit-niks” and hard-core college football fans, suddenly high school auditoriums were full of students and faculty as football players (although all ‘fall’ sports use today as their first official day to commit) sat behind an array of hats and selected a school to play at the following year. National cable sports channels started to televise these announcements live and suddenly, new stars, and a new date sports fans put on their calendars were born.

A gym full of students sat completely silent (a feat in itself) as Tim Tebow waited for an ESPN producer to count him down to when he was going to make his announcement live on the air. When he chose Florida, the assembled group erupted, with cheers of “Go Gators” ringing through all of Nease High School. Interestingly enough, anybody who was there realized just how close Tebow had gotten to going to Alabama based on his relationship with Mike Shula. While much of the suspense regarding announcements is gone from this day because of social media and early commitments, it’s still a fun and exciting day for the student athletes, their parents and the schools.

Although recruiting is an inexact science at best.

Before an avalanche of information became the norm, the 6 o’clock news was the first place college football fans would hear about which big recruits were going where. That’s why in 1986, my phone rang about every 30 seconds on Signing Day with fans asking “Where’d Emmitt Smith sign.” Luckily Smith had made his decision and announcement to attend Florida early enough in the day to get the information out in a timely fashion.

The following year, my phone rang about every 10 seconds all day with fans asking “Where’d Marquette Smith sign?” Perhaps relishing in the attention at the time, Marquette Smith waited most of the day before letting people know he was headed to FSU. The interest in Emmitt’s destination was noticeable; the interest in Marquette’s was like a circus. Of course, Emmitt Smith went on to an All-American Career in college and is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Marquette Smith never could find his footing in Tallahassee, eventually transferred to UCF (when their program was not yet Division I) and spent two years injured in the NFL. You’d have never known that based on the level of interest in the recruiting of those players before cell phones, the internet and cable television brought this day right into the national sports consciousness.

Lives will be pushed in a new direction today, parents will exhale and be thankful their son or daughter will have the opportunity to continue their education (in man cases for free) and we’ll update you throughout the day on what’s happening right here on News4Jax.com as well as our Facebook page and Twitter accounts. And we’ll have complete coverage at 5, 6, 10 and 11 tonight.

What fun!