Jason Whitlock nails it

Stern, NBA have big problem on their hands with Donaghy’s allegations


The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant was in full Kobe form on Tuesday night, putting up a shot over the Celtics’ Paul Pierce in the second half. Bryant finished with 36 points. The Celtics lead the series 2-1. LOS ANGELES The system is broken, and David Stern’s belittling of disgraced and criminal former NBA ref Tim Donaghy won’t fix the officiating crisis undermining the credibility of all big-time sports.

The system is broken, and the one “media” organization — ESPN — that could provide significant pressure to enact dramatic change from sports leagues is in partner$hip with the leagues in question.

ESPN is obsessed with Roger Clemens' (possible) steroid use. They think that a DUI by an ex-NFL player is news.

Bombshell revelations about the NBA? The professional journalists at the WWL play flack for David Stern and try to change the subject.

Waiting for Game Six

I don't know how anything can match the epic drama of a triple-overtime.

The Redwings have experience and depth. The Penquins have young legs and home ice. The Cup is in the building-- let's see if Pittsburgh can make them ship it back to Detroit.

I love football. I still have a nostalgic attachment to baseball. But when it comes to nail-biting, edge-of-your-chair drama, nothing beats play-off hockey.

UPDATE: Well, we had drama but not the kind i hoped for. Congratulations to Detroit. The Red Wings played great hockey from beginning to the end of the series.

SOP= Same Old Pirates

The Nutting's minor leage team that gets to play in the Majors is up to its old tricks.

Pirates, Morris rocked again, 10-4


Morris, Pirates pounded again

Mondesi comments:

OK, so the on-field product is not what some had anticipated. No surprise there, despite all the promises from management. But we can still look forward to Nate McLouth pinch-hitting in the 9th inning of the All-Star Game, the Tom Gorzelanny Bobblehead, Jalapeno Hanna Mrs. Potato Heads, the Lumber Company Bobblehead series, Matt Morris pitching batting practice to the other team during the game, REO Speedwagon, Collective Soul, booing A-Rod in person on a cool summer night, the new all-you-can-eat section, and eight nights of Zambelli fireworks. And that's a part of Pirate culture that will never change.

America’s Game

I feel sorry for people who don’t get the NFL network. How do they handle the football off-season? All they have is ESPN with its yapping about the Sawks and Yankees, college softball, the NBA, and poker.

The NFL network has its share of fluff (although it is football fluff). They also have the best sports series ever created: America’s Game, a history of the teams that have won the Super Bowl.

Each episode mixes game footage with interviews from three or four people from the team. These interviews are a nice blend of superstars and role-players. We hear from Starr, Namath, and Staubach, but we also hear from Randy Grossman and Chuck Mercin.

There is poignancy to many of these interviews, especially those for the first dozen or so Super Bowls. The players, superstar and role-player alike, are old men and have had decades to reflect on their shining moment. Dwight White reminds us that when Time magazine put the original Steel Curtain on its cover it was putting four black faces on real estate that was a white preserve at that time. My favorite Cowboy--Bob Lilly--hearkens back to another era when he confesses his embarrassment at throwing his helmet when Dallas lost upper Bowl V.

The film highlights and interviews recover history from the tyranny of the stats tables. When commentators talk about great running backs, they rarely mention Franco Harris anymore. His numbers look unimpressive today. But in America’s Game the viewers can see the Franco who was a marvel: a 235 pound bull going up the middle and, then, past the line of scrimmage, breaking into that long, gliding stride that made him a fullback with something extra.

In volume 10 we see the essential Franco. On a frozen field covered by icy artificial turf, Harris takes the ball against Oakland. The play is designed to go inside but there is no hole. He reverses field and breaks outside. Al Davis still whines that the Steelers iced the field that day to negate the Raiders’s team speed. Yet, there goes Franco down the sideline for a 25-yard touchdown.

The greatest Steeler, Joe Greene, give props to his old teammate. The Steelers, he notes, never won anything before Franco. But with Franco, “all we did was win.”

Winning, obviously, is the common theme to all the episodes. Despite all the changes in the game, the keys to winning remain constant. One week we see Bill Belichick in 2004 exhorting the Patriots to play “fundamentally sound football.” The next week Randy Grossman admits that Steelers football was not flashy; Chuck Noll just stressed the fundamentals, each day, every day, for years. Of course, there is Lombardi and the Sweep, refining fundamentals down to the elemental in the blast furnace of his personality and the practice field.

The two volumes on the Dolphins are notable for their insight into the alchemy of victory. The players are, rightfully, proud of their group achievements, especially the perfect 17-0 season of 1972. Yet they emphasize selflessness as the key ingredient for their success.

Larry Csonka marvels at Bob Griese play-calling in a victory over the Vikings. With the game on the line and the Dolphins driving on Minnesota’s 3 yardline, Miami used a play-action pass to score the go-ahead touchdown. Csonka, the greatest power back of the Super Bowl era, shows as much satisfaction with this play as he does for any of the times when his number was called to seal the victory. He is happy to be the decoy while Jim Mandich catches the winning score. All that mattered is that the Dolphins walked away winners.

America’s Game makes an interesting counter-point to the ESPN’s documentary “Third and a Mile.” Two of the stars of the ESPN production played on the Dolphins and Steelers. To William C. Rhoden and the WWL, Joe Gilliam and Marlin Briscoe were victims. They are, simply, black quarterbacks who were denied a chance to play that position because of their race. With America’s Game, we get context. Larry Csonka avers that that he would not have traded Bob Griese for Joe Namath. Griese’s field generalship was the key piece of the Miami machine. It was not skin color that kept Briscoe at wide receiver with Dolphins; it was Shula’s masterful orchestration of his available talent. Griese was the man who could keep the machine running without a hiccup.

When Joe Greene is asked about the quarterback controversy in 1974, he is forthright about his belief at that time that Bradshaw, not Gilliam, was the man who could best help the Steelers win.

Rhoden told his story looking only through the prism of race. He ignored the complex alchemy of winning and created a fake history. America’s Game, thankfully, rescues “the ultimate team sport” from the tyranny of the highlight clip and the falsity of ideology. It shows us what football success is all about.

Sweet!!

Davidson 73
Wisconsin 56

Davidson Is Dazzling in Toppling Another Giant

Montani semper liberi

They are also in this year's Sweet 16

West Virginia upsets second-seeded Duke, 73-67

Myron Cope, RIP

Legendary broadcaster Myron Cope dies at 79

Cope's voice-- that unmistakable, nasal Pittsburgh voice-- is the essential soundtrack of the Steelers's dynasty. It shot out of the radio during the games-- excited, goofy, yet also astute and erudite.

He was a homer. He grew up in Pittsburgh. He pulled for the Steelers. He suffered when they lost and exulted when they won. Yet, he did not hesitate to point out poor play during the game.

Yoi, we didn't block anyone on that play!

He was a homer, but he was not blind. And he was happy to tell us what he saw.

He invented the Terrible Towel and gave away the rights. All the proceeds now go to charity.

Cope liked players. He was not the type to rip a guy just to create controversy and build ratings. He was the antithesis of the loud shock jocks who dominate sports radio today.

Any fool can argue and insult. It takes real talent to hold an audience by being informative, insightful, and interesting. For three decades in Pittsburgh Cope held his audience doing just that.

Before he went into radio Cope was a sportswriter. Actually, he was one of the best. His profiles of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell stand up well after forty years and still make it into anthologies. The writing sparkles and the insight still shines through. Here is a bit of the Cosell profile that ran in Sports Illustrated in 1967:

''Oh, this horizontal ladder of mediocrity,'' sighs Howard Cosell, ruminating on the people who make up the radio-television industry, which pays him roughly $175,000 a year. ''There's one thing about this business: There is no place in it for talent. That's why I don't belong. I lack sufficient mediocrity.''

Cosell fondles a martini at a table in the Warwick bar, across the street from the American Broadcasting Company headquarters. Anguish clouds his homely face. His long nose and pointed ears loom over his gin in the fashion of a dive bomber swooping in with fighter escort.

''This is a terrible business,'' he says.

It being the cocktail hour, the darkened room is packed with theatrical and Madison Avenue types. A big blonde, made up like Harlow the day after a bender, dominates a nearby table, encircled by spindly, effete little men. Gentlemen in blue suits, with vests, jam the bar.

A stocky young network man pauses at Cosell's table and cheerfully asks if he might drop by Cosell's office someday soon. Cosell says certainly, whereupon the network man joins a jovial crowd at the bar.

''He just got fired,'' Cosell whispers. ''He doesn't know that I already know.''

The man, he is positive, wants his help, but what is Cosell to do when there are men getting fired every week?

''This is the roughest, toughest, cruelest jungle in the world,'' Cosell grieves.

A waiter brings him a phone, and he orders a limousine and chauffeur from a rental agency. He cannot wait to retreat to his rustic fireside in Pound Ridge up in Westchester County.

It is Monday evening, barely the beginning of another long week in which he, Howard W. Cosell, middle-aged and tiring, must stand against the tidal wave of mediocrity, armed only with his brilliance and integrity.

Tennessee Women End Duke Home Streak

DURHAM, N.C. — The Tennessee men’s basketball coach, Bruce Pearl, showed his school spirit last season, baring his chest and painting it with a white “V” when the Lady Vols faced Duke in Knoxville. There was no such display Monday night from Pearl’s Duke counterpart, Mike Krzyzewski, when Tennessee played at Duke.

Instead, the Cameron Indoor Stadium fans greeted Tennessee with the kind of vitriol that Coach Pat Summitt has warned could end the series between two of the elite teams in women’s college basketball. But amid the chants and jeers, Tennessee held off the Blue Devils, 67-64, to end Duke’s 24-game home winning streak.

Sometimes the good guys win one.

Further evidence of the pointlessness of public editors

I have to admit that the ESPN ombudsman sometimes makes a lot of sense. Le Anne Schreiber told the Southern Pines Pilot

One of the most satisfying things about being the ESPN ombudsman is that it provides a very good perch for watching what is happening to journalism in general.

She is on to something there. I had the same thought and was going to use the Mike Gundy/ Jenni Carlson dust-up to illustrate the pernicious attitudes that hurt the Dinosaur Media. The public editor, though, beat me to it in her most recent letter.

The instigator of Gundy's Saturday rage was an opinion column couching itself as fact. I am not ombudsman for the Oklahoman, but through a week's ridicule of Gundy on ESPN, I never heard or read a clear account of the column that ticked him off. In what was supposed to be a balanced, give-both-sides-of-the-story report on ESPNEWS, I saw the full three-minute, 20-second videotape of Gundy's news conference for the umpteenth time, followed by a videotape of reporter Jenni Carlson's response on "Good Morning America," in which she says, calmly, "I stand firmly on the facts of the column." He looked bad. She looked good.

"What facts?" somebody at ESPN should have asked before ridiculing the coach while giving the columnist a pass. In building her case against the benched quarterback, Carlson introduces her evidence of his no-can-do attitude with these phrases: "If you believe the rumors and the rumblings …", "Tile up the back stories told on the sly over the past few years …", "Word is …" and "Insiders say …". In my book, those are not phrases from the realm of fact; they barely count even as speculation by anonymous sources.

Several commentators faulted Carlson for criticizing an amateur athlete so harshly, and ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski raised questions about the accuracy of her observations But why did I hear no one at ESPN explicitly note that the column that so enraged Gundy was based on rumors and rumblings and the sayings of "insiders"? Because they want to be allowed to take those same liberties? Because they didn't bother to read the column? Because all that mattered was milking that videotape for a week's worth of commentary? Because the boundaries between fact, opinion and rumor have become so porous that nobody noticed rumor crossing the border with a fake passport?

All of this is true. Moreover, it came from ESPN’s internal conscience. How can a mere blogger compete?

Actually, it’s pretty easy. Schreiber comments on espn.com and my non-post on an unread blog had exactly the same effect on the World Wide Leader:

ZERO. Nada. Zip.

Despite Schreiber’s trenchant criticism, the same clueless blowhards hold forth on ESPN. Bayless, Lupica, Forde, et. al. still cough up their fact-lite punditry on subjects they are too lazy to study.

It’s a perfect case study of corralled rebellion.

The old boys club at work


I'll admit that I don't have high expectations for ombudsmen or "public editors". An interesting example of the problems inherent in the role shows up in this story:

Schreiber Keeps an Eye on ESPN 'Monolith'

Schreiber actually has a good grasp of the basic problems at ESPN:

Schreiber has been quite critical of ... the loud, talking heads who shout too much
***
Schreiber criticizes some of the anchors of the "Sports Center" shows throughout each day, complaining that those people make themselves more important than the news.
***
Schreiber wrote a strong and excellent column claiming that sportscasters doing a game should "keep their eye on the ball."
***
She said, "The most consistent complaint I get from viewers is that the announcing team is not sufficiently focused on the game." She explained that game announcers often digress from the game "by discussing topics near and far from the game at hand".

So far so good. But how can she believe such things and then do something like this?

Throughout her critiques, Schreiber lauds some ESPN talking heads such as Tony Kornheiser...

Come on now. Kornheiser is one of the most high profile figures at ESPN and he is guilty of every talking head sin that Schreiber condemns. He is loud, lazy, ill-informed, and self-indulgent. His primary role on Monday Night Football is to divert attention away from the game and onto some subject he like more.

Maybe i am the suspicious sort, but i wonder if this is the reason Kornheiser gets a pass:

Throughout her critiques, Schreiber lauds some ESPN talking heads such as Tony Kornheiser, for his work on "Pardon The Interruption." Tony was on the Times sports staff as a reporter with me when Schreiber was the sports editor.

It's easy for Schreiber, with her "postgraduate degree in literature" and her tenure at the NEW YORK TIMES, to chastise ex-jocks and reporters from lesser papers. But she just can't quite say a mean word about litle Tony who worked with her at THE TIMES.

As with most public editors, Schreiber is, first and foremost, a member of the journalist s guild. Further, she is a member of its most exalted order-- New York Times alums. That shapes her thinking and her criticism. What she calls "perspective" we in the gret unwashed call "blinders."

He joked his way to an important truth

ESPN's Mike Greenberg talks about an emotionally devastating experience-- Googling himself :

Golic: So you didn’t receive the negative criticism well?
Greeny: Well, at first, it was just sort of mesmerizing. I was just like, wow.
Golic: Did you think everybody loved you?
Greeny: You know, you can sort of live in this world where you think most people like you.

I think most big-time media personalities labor under the same delusion. They think they are smart, funny, and wildly popular. The horrible thing about the new media is that they (sometimes) find out that it just ain't so.

This says it all

A view from afar: No love lost for most announcers

What was Agassi doing that made him so great? Well, it might be easier to say what he wasn't doing. For one, he wasn't screaming. He wasn't trying hard to be funny. He wasn't trying to be hip or controversial or glib or silly. He didn't try any goofy gimmicks. He did not talk down to us.

I think this is what's missing most. Look, we as fans know more about football than ever before. We've seen enough football and played enough video games that we don't need announcers to tell us about stunts and blitzes like we've never heard the term before. We've watched enough replays that we can make up our own minds about whether or not a call will be reversed. We've seen enough touchdowns that we don't need sound effects. We've heard the cliches.

New find

Awful Announcing bashes and flays those who really deserve it: sports announcers and commentators on TV. This post is so right it is scary. I especially like this:

Now, I rag on Kornheiser, and I’m aware that a lot of people like him. I just get annoyed that his columns seem to be nudging and winking at me all the time. I get it, he’s wacky. But he’s starting to remind me of Garrison Keillor, in that people now laugh out of reflex, even if something’s not that funny. Here, Tony took a five-minute break from all of his television work to give us 470 words on… himself, Wilbon, Kim Jong Il, basketball, hockey, and golf. It’s like ADD in print, and he covered all of this in under 500 words!

Missing something

Using steroids is cheating according to baseball purists and that means Barry Bonds should be anathema to all right thinking fans.

OK. Then why is notorious spitballer Gaylord Perry in the Hall of Fame?

FYI: I'm a Bonds-hater of long standing, but for the right reasons. I can't forgive him for coming up small in the post-season for the Pirates and then bailing on the team as a free agent.

UPDATE: Scott Chaffin has some smart thoughts here.

Just to clarify-- i think steroids need to be banned. They are dangerous. I'm just puzzled by the idea that there is good cheating (Gaylord Perry) that gets you to the Hall of Fame, and bad cheating (Bonds) that keeps you out of the Hall.

I think i am mainly disgusted by the sportwriters who are now so high and mighty about McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds. Not too long ago, they were celebrating those men and their homers even though the whispers about steroids were everywhere.

Also, it's true that the steroid era has played havoc with the records book. We are to blame the players for this. On the other hand, no one has a problem with the shrinking size of ball parks that also produce more home runs. (Though, truth is, the Babe had a pretty sweet place to play in the Bronx for a lefty power hitter.)

Barry Bonds

Steve Sailer has some good points about steroids in sports:

Bonds started taking steroids in 1999 because he was jealous of the credulous admiration paid to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa for hitting all those homers in 1998. You kept hearing silly stuff like "McGwire and Sosa have returned the innocence to the game!" McGwire was caught with a steroid precursor in his locker in late 1998 and it still didn't instill many doubts.

[And]

Baseball stat guru Bill James was shamefully quiet during the many years while the steroid scourge distorted individual statistics, and he's not doing his reputation any favors by digging himself a deeper hole by still talking about Bonds' new wonder bat and other rationalizations.

It's funny to see so many sports reporters wail about Bonds when many of them (cough, Lupica, cough) jumped on the McGwire/Sosa bandwagon in 1998.

Why Pirates fans should be angry

For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art.

"Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" by John Updike© 1960

This gets to the issue for Pirates fans. The fifteen years of losing is bad, very bad. That’s a chronic condition. Something a city has to live with. It’s no way to win new fans but old fans are bludgeoned into weary acceptance. In Pittsburgh, loving baseball means watching your team lose most of the time every year.

Still, as Updike says, any particular game is relatively detached from the season’s inevitable disappointment.

The acute problem, the ugly fact that jolts the baseball lover from bitter acceptance to boiling anger, goes back to Updike’s “tissue-thin difference.” This team is filled with players who do not care. Or at least do not care enough to do things well.

Lack of talent is a given for small market teams. Our lineup will never rival the Yankees; our pitching won’t make anyone forget the ’71 Orioles.

Yet, in each game a mediocre player has the same choice as a superstar: to take pains or go through the motions. In Pittsburgh there are too many who just go through the motions. What we see over and over is a group of millionaires who don’t give a damn about the game. Poor base running, bad fielding, and sloppy play all contribute to the general malaise hangs over this team.

UPDATE: I’d love to see a local paper do something gutsy with regard to the Pirates. In my dream scenario I’d love to see a sports editor announce that they are reassigning the reporters on the Pirates beat to “big-time sports” and using AP recaps for Pirates’s games. That would be a sweet statement:

“In a time of constrained resources for newspapers, we can no longer justify assigning full time reporters to a minor league team.”

That will never happen, of course. The local press is made up of wimpy little lapdogs who defend the owners and think that doing so is somehow principled. MSM delusions reign even on the sports pages as this column shows:

Fans waging fight against way Nuttings do business

We're not talking about a boycott, which some people are calling for. There's a movement afoot to boycott not only the Pirates but all of Nutting's business ventures. That's mean-spirited and wrong.

Nutting is not a bad person. He is not dispensing social injustice. What he is doing is not illegal, unethical or immoral. What he is guilty of -- in the eyes of most people -- is running his business in a fan-unfriendly manner. He does not deserve to be boycotted and most certainly the people who work for him, be it at PNC Park, Seven Springs or his many newspapers do not deserve to have their jobs placed in jeopardy because the Pirates stink.

I have to disagree strongly on this. First, when a business antagonizes its customers, it should pay a price. Mr. Smizek believes that Nutting should not worry about social justice, but apparently the paying customers must make that uppermost in their minds. (Buy tickets or some poor ticket-taker will lose his job). That is so silly that it boggles the mind.

Further, I do consider Pirate ownership unethical and immoral because lying is immoral and unethical. When tax payers put up millions for a new ball park, they did not do it so Bob Nutting could have a profitable, bad baseball team in Pittsburgh. They were told that the new park would make the Pirates competitive on the field, not just on the income statement. For the owner to take the money and not follow through is most definitely immoral and unethical.

The usual justification for keeping the Pirates was that big league sports enhanced Pittsburgh image. Maybe the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review should start putting some tough questions to the “civic boosters” and politicians who led the charge to spend tax money on PNC Park. How does the city’s image look now? Is it a good thing for the national press to refer to the Pittsburgh Pirates as a “glorified triple A team”? Is “fifteen years of losing” really the best brand message for a struggling city?

Time to change the name

In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh became known as the 'City of Champions". It's image was enhanced by the titles won by the Steelers and Pirates. Now, the city's image, its "brand" is tarnished by the link to a pathetic baseball team.

It just seems unfair. The people of Pittsburgh held up their end of the bargain. They put up boatloads of money for a beautiful new stadium. They still sit in the stands to watch a bad team lose. What they get in return is the linking of "Pittsburgh" with "losers", "futility", and "joke".

Justice demands that something be done. Pittsburgh deserves a winner. At a minimum, Pittsburgh should not be tied to constant losing.

The Pirates are bad, not because the fans willnot support baseball, but because the team owners like steady profits more than winning.

The fair thing to do, it seems to me, is to stop calling this team the Pittsburgh Pirates. Call them what they are; make the name reflect who is calling the shots. When ESPN mocks the Pirates as a "glorified minor league team", it should be the "Nutting-McClatchey Pirates" being lampooned.

Why should the owners count their money in the shadows while the city takes the hit to its reputation? Maybe they would care more about winning if losing reflected poorly on their name instead of the city's

Sometimes Cinderella doesn't want to go to the ball

Well, she wants to go, but not if it means working too hard. I mean, she's happy to go but not if she has to do her own hair. Or iron her own dress. Or learn anything about etiquette.

That's how the story goes if Cinderella is played by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Playing in a weak division, they find ways to lose. Actually, it is worse than that: they refuse to do the little things that win games. Bad base running, relievers who can't throw strikes, pinch-hitters who can't hit, hitters who strike out with the winning run on on second.

If they played smart baseball, they could be pressing the Brewers in the division race. Instead, they are mired in their fifteenth consecutive season of failure and frustration.

The surprising thing is that they still have paying customers in the stands.

Or maybe that is the problem. Why try to put out a good product if people will buy the same old crap you always sell.

Big fights then and now

I understand there is a title fight this weekend. I wonder how many sports fans know or care?

It is a cliché that box has lost popularity. It is hard to imagine just how big boxing used to be.

In his biography of Jack Dempsey, Roger Kahn puts it into perspective:

[Babe] Ruth's annual salary was fifty thousand dollars. (It eventually reached eighty thousand dollars). ... Any year he chose to fight, the heavyweight champion could gross a million dollars from his fists and his irresistible persona.

Sports: Miscellaneous thoughts in search of a theme


Death came for Grambling’s Eddie Robinson right when the coaching carousel was in full swing for college basketball. Very few of those who praised him noted how different he was from the men they cover today.

It is easy to criticize modern players for their bad discipline and self-centeredness. (I know because I’ve done it on this blog.) Let’s recognize that their college coaches help teach those lessons.

The prevailing ethos among big-time college coaches is take the money and run. Most of those coaches still preach the value of discipline, team play, character, and self-sacrifice. As they do so, the larger message they send is “do as I say, not as I do.” All too many coaches who exhort young players to sacrifice for the team are willing to abandon those players and that team for a chance at a bigger payday.

Many of Robinson’s former players spoke about the big role he played in their lives. The sentiments were identical to those I heard after Woody Hayes passed. Both coaches kept a heavy hand on their players and the players came to love them for it.

A coach can only pull that off if their loyalty to the team and to school are absolute. In the case of Hayes and Robinson it was and it worked. When a modern coach applies the same tactics it is just exploitive and tyrannical.

Ricky Williams was roundly (and rightly) criticized for quitting on the Dolphins and letting down his teammates. Nick Saban quit on the Dolphins and did not receive the same level of criticism. It was, apparently, justified by the big pay check. How is it that we have adopted the ethics of whoredom“I did it for the money”?

In his masterful The Face of Battle, John Keegan reflects on the reasons for the British victory at Waterloo. The crux of the battle was simple enough. Napoleon had to break the British line somewhere and was unable to do so. As Keegan puts it:

The British still stood on the line Wellington had marked out for them, planted by the hold officers had over themselves and so over their men. Honour, in a very peculiar sense, had triumphed.

Eddie Robinson’s achievements had the same source as Wellington’s victory. At Grambling, as at Waterloo, honor and selflessness made everything else possible.