Category Archives: football
Artful Art and Big D
My father was a big man. In fact we called him “Big D”. He encouraged it.
Dr. Arthur Bernard Bok, Jr. served 23 years as team physician for the University of Dayton. He was a pioneer in the field of sports medicine. Before that he was team physician for the Dayton Gems IHL hockey team. He was an expert face stitcher. My brothers’ mugs as well as my own were canvases for his work. The same goes for many of our friends. Dad donated countless hours of medical service to everyone from neighborhood rink rats to college athletes. Any kid trying out for any team in any sport was entitled to a free physical at Doc Bok’s office.
Artful Art
He was born in Cincinnati, grew up in Toledo and came to Dayton on a football scholarship.
He played in the first Ohio high school North/South all-star game in 1946. Notre Dame legend Frank Leahy coached the South team. Leahy tried to poach my pop for the Irish. But, this being the pre-Urban Meyer era, dad kept his commitment to the Flyers. This upset my grandmother but pleased my grandfather. It also pleased my siblings and me because Dayton is where he met a pretty cheerleader, Jeanne Stewart, who became our mother.
He really was big for a back in those days – 6’2″ 192 pounds. And fast. He ran a 10 second flat hundred yard dash. The 40 had not yet been invented.
As a 17 year old in training camp he competed against much older returning war vets and earned a starting job as a freshman. He went on to become the Flyers’ all-time leading scorer. In 1948 he averaged 6.7 yards per carry.
The papers called him “Artful Art” and “Mr. Inside Outside”.
Following a 72 yard touchdown run against John Carroll in Cleveland stadium, Paul Brown paid him a visit in the locker room. His hopes, however, of playing for the Cleveland Browns were dashed when the Baltimore Colts drafted him in 1950.
He signed a $5,000.00 contract. Today’s NFL was not my father’s NFL. The team was lousy and the equipment worse. He stuck around long enough to get mentioned in Art Donavan’s book Fatso but soon gave up football for med school and marriage.
He attended the Chicago School of Osteopathic Medicine and returned to Dayton to begin his practice and raise his family.
Everybody loved him. I wanted to be just like him. When I was 12 or so someone asked if I would be a football player too. Big D’s reply was, “he may be small but he’s slow”. That stung but not too much because it was funny. I got bigger and faster but in the end he was right. I became a cartoonist.
My dad lived a rich and rewarding life. He was surrounded by our loving mother, 5 children, and 16 of his 19 grandchildren when it came to an end. After he breathed his last we said a prayer, poured martinis and toasted him. Old number 44 was 86.
Now, back to drawing the people I don’t like!
Johnny Football
As his stock dropped, and the Cleveland’s second pick in the draft approached, a squirming Johnny Football texted Browns’ quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains.
Loggains told “SportsTalk with Bo Mattingly” on ESPN Arkansas 96.3 that Manziel sent him a text that read: “I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me because I want to wreck this league together.”
And so the wreckage began. The Browns traded up two spots and took Manziel with the 22nd pick. Same place they picked Brandon Weeden and Brady Quinn in drafts of yesteryear.
Johnny Football after Midnight
The most action Manziel has seen since then was when an overly affectionate fan touched off a bench clearing brawl in his live-in hotel last week. The 2:30 a.m. workout didn’t sit well with the Browns’ brass.
All seems forgiven. Johnny played two series of downs in Sunday’s loss to Buffalo. He scored a touchdown and fumbled in his own end zone. Good enough for a possible start against the Colts this Sunday.
Update:
Not quite good enough. Hoyer will start on Sunday.
DEA NFL
Here’s a new headache for the NFL, and this time it’s not from concussions.
DEA agents raided traveling NFL team docs and trainers last Sunday. They snooped through their bags searching for painkillers. The idea being that since they were traveling from out of state, the docs might be prescribing drugs without a license.
Interestingly, being out of state doesn’t prevent the players from being hit with local taxes in the state where a game is played.
NFL vs. NOW
The NFL is in a panic over angry women and angry sportswriters, sometimes one and the same. Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference yesterday to announce a crackdown on football players behaving badly. It played to very bad reviews. He apologized and promised a new and more sensitive NFL. But no number of pink ribbons will satisfy the National Organization for Women. President Terry O’Neill immediately renewed calls for Goodell’s head.
Never mind that the arrest rate for NFL players is lower than the rate for adult men in the general population. Here’s a chart from Deadspin.
NFL vs. NOW
So, why the uproar now? Ray Rice was seen last February dragging his unconscious fiancé Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City casino elevator, caveman style. It was obvious something brutal had happened. Rice was charged with aggravated assault and placed in a one year pre-trial intervention program. The NFL suspended him for two games. With the unpleasantness behind them, Janay and Ray got married and lived happily ever after.
That is until an elevator video surfaced this month on TMZ showing Ray actually dropping Janay with a left hook. Then the NFL took action to punish the victim by taking away her husband’s of income. Rice was suspended indefinitely.
Video footage evidently concentrates the mind, whether it’s of a knockout punch or a beheading. That puts Commissioner Goodell and President Obama in the same boat. Well, not actually, NOW still likes Obama.
Ray Rice’s Knockout Game
The knockout game was played in Memphis last weekend. It’s a game in which random people get sucker punched by punks. The idea is to knock the victim senseless. The knockout game is senseless.
But after seeing Baltimore Raven Ray Rice cold-cock his fiancé in an elevator I think I get it. The knockout game is a new NFL fantasy league.
