Swing and a Miss, and a Miss, and a Miss
I say this without reservation or fear of contradiction: nobody likes to be wrong.
For our purposes, let’s stay away from the garden-variety miscalculations. We’re not talking about missteps like, “Damn, I left my keys at the Donohues’.” This is the big stuff. Big as in Julia Roberts marrying Lyle Lovett. Big as in there’s absolutely nothing in Al Capone’s vault. Big as in Evel Knievel jumping over a canyon.
These are hideous mistakes, horrendous lapses in judgment, blunders so horribly off-base that the only recourse is to stop on the side of the interstate and revel in the glory of the steaming tire fire you created.
In other words, to own it.
It seems much harder for guys to do this. We’re raised to be leaders, to be dependable, to be logical and rock-solid providers for our families. They count on us. But wrong—pathetically, irretrievably wrong—is tough to admit. It translates into undependable, misinformed, and unreliable. Damn it, that’s not who we are.
After all, we’re the ones who wrote the United States Constitution. Never mind that it’s been amended twenty-seven times since, and we’ve even amended one of our amendments. I’m on a roll here. We are men. We need to be right.
I’ve been wrong. I’m not too proud to admit it. I’ve been really, really wrong. I’m about to own a few of these times publicly and ingloriously to my shame and for your amusement. But first let me attempt to explain my wrongness, to place it into the proper context so I can make wrong sound as right as possible. Hey, what can I say? I’m a guy.
Through the years there have been very few people in the media I consider so talented or informative that I can’t miss what they have to offer. There just aren’t many people who give me a unique, can’t-find-anywhere-else narrative that pulls me in every time.
Andy Rooney’s pieces on 60 Minutes were like flypaper for me. Jon Stewart’s opening twelve-minute rants on The Daily Show have the same adhesive quality. Former New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich is in the same category.
It might have taken me a while to excavate my way to Rich’s columns in the Sunday Times—the thing’s roughly the size of the San Antonio phone book—but I never missed one. His takes on the mass media and politics seized my attention for the quality of the writing, and always made me think. He took angles where others took shots.
In his final column before departing to New York magazine, Rich delicately described the anguish of the opinion-maker. “The routine can push you to have stronger opinions than you actually have.”
Truer words have never been lamented.
But where Rich had a once-a-week column, I have a once-a-segment obligation to summon a strong opinion. If you make a habit of issuing weak, I-can-go-either-way opinions on the biggest stories, the radio ratings system, called PPM, will punish you into oblivion. Sometimes it feels like a Three Stooges skit, when stories are breaking in real-time and you’re being fed information in one ear and throwing out your perspective almost simultaneously. In our short-attention-span culture, listeners give you no more than twenty seconds, on average, to make a point or they’re gone. There they go—Radio Runaways.
And that’s why keeping one eye on the scoreboard can drive you crazy. You’re going to swing and miss. You’re going to be looking for the fastball, get the changeup, and look completely foolish as you lunge and miss and fall down in the box. It’s inevitable.
I’m more Olive Garden than prix-fixe French restaurant to begin with, so filling time and space—and lots of it—is a job requirement. I don’t have the luxury of a copy editor, and I can’t let my opinions marinate for twenty-four hours before the white smoke billows from the chimney and I deliver my royal decree.
Hell, no—I’ve got to talk, and talk now.
Now, back to me being brutally wrong.
In my two decades in sports radio, two or three whiffs stand out.
I thought—no, check that, I knew, deep in my bones—that Ryan Leaf would be a better NFL quarterback than Peyton Manning. This wasn’t even a tough choice. Manning had nervous feet. He was immobile. His body looked like it was molded out of Brie. In his biggest college games, he wore a deer-in-the-headlights look that spelled disaster against bigger, faster, meaner NFL players. He had NFL-caliber talent surrounding him at Tennessee, especially at the skill positions, and yet this character couldn’t beat his rival. Ever.
However, Leaf … Leaf was a different story. Big, strong, fearless, he stood in the pocket looking downfield for his undersized, undertalented receivers as the defenders rolled off him. He threw darts to guys whose skill sets would be mocked by CFL general managers. Leaf was confident, bordering on cocky. He was a man among boys. Manning was anxious and often overwhelmed.
Good lord, this opinion produced some significant seismic activity on the sports Richter scale.
Peyton Manning, it was later discovered, is actually Deep Blue, the chess computer that beat Garry Kasparov. Manning = Deep Blue, if computers threw pinpoint crossing routes. He’s mechanically and intellectually the perfect QB life-form. And Leaf? Well, Leaf dissolved into a life-form that resembles circa 1980s Sam Kinison on a bender.
There’s no reason for me to stop here. When it was reported that Kevin Durant was unable to bench-press 185 pounds in the days leading up to the 2007 draft, I went to town on this information. I buried Durant for days. I didn’t only criticize the kid; I mocked him. I unleashed my vitriol in a condescending tone; I wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to dress himself before games.
I kept at it, even after a long-time scout assured me the kid was for real. He was built like a breadstick, but he had the kind of range nuclear submarines envy. Yeah, whatever. What does an expert with twenty-seven years in the business know?
I’m not exactly sure what happened to Durant, although it’s been reported in some circles—probably alternative newspapers with minuscule circulations and irresponsible writers—that he’s actually turned into a decent … ah, fuck it: Kevin Durant is amazing, and I was dead wrong.
In no particular order, I hereby present to you a sampling of a few other tiny, slight, relatively incorrect predictions I made on the air. I’ll even use the actual quotes from the broadcasts, just so you don’t miss out on any of the subtleties and nuances I brought to these could-go-either-way opinions.
PREDICTION/GUARANTEE: “Mike Tyson’s trainer could beat Buster Douglas.”
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Not precisely that.
PREDICTION/GUARANTEE: “Tom Brady and Randy Moss can cash their Super Bowl–winning checks now. The New York Giants are overmatched.”
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: The checks bounced.
PREDICTION/GUARANTEE: “Notre Dame is done playing for national titles. Fifty-year-olds still think they’re relevant. Not recruits.”
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: I’m still not entirely sure. How did they go unbeaten again?
PREDICTION/GUARANTEE: “The 2013 NCAA Tourney will be different. Take underdogs, not favorites. This is the year of the little guy.”
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: The exact opposite.
In closing, that felt really good. Cathartic, almost therapeutic. There’s a weight off my shoulders now. There’s no reason to bottle up that kind of angst and let it fester inside you. Just let it out, give it some air, see where it goes.
Being defensive serves no purpose. As a therapist once told me, the faster you own your own baggage, the faster you can create something new. It’s an opportunity to take more risks, to live boldly, free of the fear of being wrong.
By the way, did I ever tell you how right I was about Tim Tebow?
Acknowledgments
What is luck, and how do you define it?
Do we create our own or is it truly random, landing in our laps without discretion or reason?
It was drilled into me from an early age, probably from coaches, that accomplishment followed a direct path, beginning with setting a goal and working hard to achieve i
t. That equation leaves little room for good fortune or bad breaks. You control everything, and reliance on anything or anybody is simply a weakness, right? It invalidates all that hard work you pour into something. Over time, though, I’ve come to understand that we all need some luck. Occasionally, we all land some.
And if not for a healthy dose of it, this project would have never been completed.
After spending two years writing columns, ideas, notes, and one-liners on everything from napkins to legal pads to an airsickness bag, I was frustrated. My schedule was crammed with a radio and television show that left me exhausted at the end of every week. One night on my deck, drinking wine and lamenting the process, my wife, Ann, gave me an ultimatum: finish the book or stop complaining about it. Either way, I needed to control my destiny. For a woman who doesn’t enjoy much about sports, she became a great coach that night.
From that point forward, the pieces started to fall into place. Good fortune played a key role.
In a random conversation with ESPN’s Matthew Berry, I was connected to literary agent Richard Abate. After struggling to connect with two previous book agents, I drove to New York almost resigned to the inevitable conclusion of the project. Instead, his instincts and energy were a perfect match.
We agreed that in order for this book to come together I needed to work with a sharp and experienced writer who would push me—and the project—to a new level. “Have you heard of Tim Keown? He cowrote that book you were just reading in my office. I’ll give him a call.”
Tim has several bestsellers to his credit, and I drove home that night figuring my chances of landing him were somewhere, statistically, below slim. But people do occasionally hit holes in one. A man once landed a jetliner on the Hudson River. It could happen, right? College tuition isn’t getting any cheaper. Maybe he has several kids. Hopefully thirteen.
A few days later I was told Tim had agreed to help me.
There is no other way to put this—good fortune was on my side that day.
Many people say that writing books is a daunting and exhausting experience. It wasn’t easy, but I’ve never enjoyed any project or teammate more in twenty-five years in the business.
I viewed each of our phone calls as an opportunity to prove to Tim that he wasn’t wasting his time. That’s how respect works, at least for me.
I feel lucky to have worked with Tim and I just want him to know that. I want you to know that, too.
About the Author
COLIN COWHERD is currently the host of The Herd with Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio and ESPNU. He is also a former cohost of the show SportsNation on ESPN2.
You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will Page 22
