Bleacher Report - Articles by Christopher Thornton

Denver Broncos: Pick a Pair...of Points and Wins

Christopher Thornton — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:10:17 -0400

There's been a lot of static about the Chargers-Broncos game over the officiating. To me, all that is beside the point. Let's look at the real story: a story of winning and losing. A story of not going for the tie, about winning a football game rather than prolonging it by going for overtime.

The Denver Broncos grew a pair, a pair of points. They went for a two-point conversion after a touchdown when an extra point would have tied the game. They tried to win, when failure would have meant a loss. They ran a play, tossed the dice, and let the offense win the game.

Isn't that why you turned on the TV in the first place? Isn't that why you were watching the NFL rather than the PGA? Isn't that football?

Overtime is a badly-matched mishmash of timing, rules, and random chance. Making decisions with the goal of reaching overtime is its own punishment. Lose the coin toss, and your defense has to prevent a field goal that means the end of the game and a loss.

I can't stand overtime. I don't know how to fix it, so my solution is quite simple. No overtime. If a game ends in a tie, then count the tie as a loss, by both teams. This puts the motivation right where it needs to be.

Play the game, because the game is timed. When the time expires, the game is over. When your offense sputters in the second quarter, it might very well cost you the game. If your defense blows an assignment and lets an easy touchdown on the board in the third quarter, it might very well cost you the game.

Football should be four quarters, not four quarters with an option for more if everyone agrees.

If you want an exciting game, then just realize that it's already there for you. It's been there all along. If you don't like last-second field goals and numerous overtimes, then don't support overtime, or the coaches that wind up there.

Play football, rather than a best-two-out-of-three field goal kicking contest. My best to the Denver Broncos coaching staff and their new pair...of wins.

Tennessee Titans: What Were You Thinking When You Heard The News?

Christopher Thornton — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 07:43:38 -0400

What you were thinking when you heard the story of Vince Young being sought by Nashville Police at the team's request? Be honest with yourself. Wasn't something like this the story you expected to read the next day?

Why did Vince Young commit suicide?

Vince Young, quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, committed suicide today while sitting in his car on a side street near Nashville, TN. It was the apparent end to a day-long odyssey that began after a family quarrel led to Young storming out of his house, apparently without his cell phone so that he could not be found easily.

Nashville Police had been actively seeking Young for most of the day after having been notified by Titans personnel of Young's apparent threats to harm himself amid published reports of his having quit the team. Young had recently suffered a knee injury and had been replaced by a backup quarterback.

Why does such a talented, rich, visible person decide to end it all? What more could he have wanted that he did not have? Surely an NFL quarterback is at the top of his profession. Clearly, his mother still loved him. Okay, enough.

All conjecture, of course. I'd like to say that I have no animosity at all for Young, the Titans, or the NFL. Vince Young, as far as I can tell from the right side of the state, is still alive and most likely will continue to throw interceptions and be lustily booed as well as cheered when he throws touchdown passes.

That's the life of an NFL quarterback. Feast and famine, not for long, living with the knowledge that even moderate hits can put you down for the season, if not your career. I enjoy watching football and will continue to watch.

Do interceptions hurt that much? Does booing go that far under the skin? Are we seeing the middle part of a boxing movie where the main character is in the depths of despair before he is re-awakened to his passion while the horns play a loud fanfare? I don't see an orchestra at the stadium waiting for its cue to tell him to start throwing 60-yard touchdown passes.

None of it happened.

I would hope that he's not a prisoner of his situation, at least financially. It would be so easy to be the ATM for all your family and friends when that big NFL salary hits your account. I couldn't imagine what it might be like to reach that level only to find that you don't want to do it anymore.

Then, the bills you piled up as the quarterback are still there, but you don't have the quarterback paycheck to pay them any longer. You can't just quit. Thus, he may be trapped. Trapped, on the sideline with a towel over your head with an entire stadium expressing displeasure at your performance.

You can't be the quarterback without the drive, and the drive isn't there. Now what? There's lots of younger quarterbacks just chomping at the bit, hoping you'll fail so they can have a shot.

Something for the next crop of college quarterbacks to consider, isn't it? Could it be helpful to consider the ramifications of this situation, even if only to educate the next bunch?

Life with the Tennessee Volunteers: Resistance Is Futile

Christopher Thornton — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:20:15 -0400

Eleven or twelve years ago, I knew what the hell I was doing.

I lived in the same town I grew up in, rooting for the same college and pro teams. I had the clothes, knew which radio stations carried which games, and even while traveling around didn't have to miss a game except by choice.

It wasn't a bad life, but of course it changed. My new bride didn't like my town, or my suggestions of much larger, NFL and MLB-equipped, cities. We wound up in a nice place—I like the weather and the scenery, but these people, and their colors, are different.

My wardrobe was, and for a large part remains, primarily the colors of my alma mater and the pro teams I grew up with: Colors that do not fit here. Colors that do not match here. Colors that, quite frankly, are harder to find here. Colors that are not orange.

I am now a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee. The people are nice, the weather is fine—there are so many worse places to be.

But, so help me, these people are orange. Also, their buildings are orange. They drive orange cars. The playgrounds are overrun with children that, from a distance, resemble oompa-loompas.

Orange, for me, was your breakfast drink, the color of plastic barrels and warning signs on an interstate under construction, prison inmates on TV, the long extension cord that went to the weed whacker. Orange only really got out of hand on Halloween.

After living here for a dozen years, the orange just becomes part of the background, like the grass or the sky or the potholes anywhere else. Yet, when you look with a will, it can be overwhelming.

Businesses, at least the successful ones, are drenched in orange paint. TV ads, the newspaper, orange frosting on cakes at the grocery store—it's just everywhere. Even the sign in the men's room admonishing cleanliness has an orange background hue.

Prison escapees from other states wouldn't need to change clothes before walking the streets here. To non-residents, the entire city is the big house. The all-over-orange jumpsuit-wearing escapee here is just another Vol going about his business, just like everyone else.

I am the one who is different. I am the one who is not fitting in, with white cars and blue shirts and red hats.

Why do I still resist? After all, this football team, the colors of which I find so different, is better by far than my alma mater and its in-state rivals. The combined win totals of all of the teams of my native state wouldn't add up to a subpar season for this bunch. They're winners. They get it done.

I grew up to the alcoholic solace of hard losses dealt out by the much stronger teams like Tennessee. I can drink like these people can win, but which is the better skill?

I have to work some football Saturdays, and I am known for my score updates over the PA system of a game that only one person in the building cared about while wearing my red jersey and playing Dixie on my iPod. They just smile indulgently, as if I just don't get it. It could be worse, I'm told: I could be a Florida fan, which is not allowed under any circumstances.

My children, of course, know nothing different. They wear their orange t-shirts with pride on Friday, like everyone else in the class, and my son can sing two verses of Rocky Top and idolizes Peyton Manning, who was out of college football before my son was even in this world.

My daughter draws the UT logos in chalk on my driveway—the driveway that holds my white car with its out-of-state, more expensive, collegiate license plate. They belong, even if I, by my own choice, do not.

Why do I persist with ESPN Game Plan, Internet radio, and the same losing tradition? It's true that Peyton would not have existed without Archie, but even the Mannings live in New Orleans now.

Is it so wrong, such a betrayal, to finally win? To blindly expect to win, the way my neighbors do? To toast another SEC victory, rather than drown another SEC loss? What's wrong with that? I do, after all, live here now.

I can see it coming, though. Over the years, I began to not just bet on the SEC teams from my home state, but on the entire SEC. I've learned how to bet on Tennessee, with very good results. (Fulmer never, ever beats the spread.) I told myself that I wasn't abandoning my team and my state, just broadening my betting horizons.

Last season, I began listening to the Tennessee games live on the radio. After all, I was betting on them, and I could get that game easily on the radio without Internet trickery or a fatter cable bill. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, you have to listen to the game to be able to discuss it intelligently, right?

The crown of all was a recent shopping trip we took to Atlanta. There, in a sporting goods store I frequent because of its large (read: existent) selection of items from my alma mater, was a display of shirts in several colors on clearance. I selected red, blue, white, and finally, orange.

I haven't worn the orange shirt yet. The next time the neighbors invite us over to watch the Tennessee game on TV, though, they're going to get the shock of their lives. I'll be assimilated in my orange polo. I'll still be whistling Dixie, though.