by Pat Hickey
April 10, 2024
I have not watched the NBA in decades. I stopped watching the NFL when room temperature I.Q. mesomorphs took a knee. I have not watched a Super Bowl, since Dave Diehl helped Eli Manning defeat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. I remember my dad saying that the Super Bowl will be the end of dignity in sport. He said that in 1967. My brother authored a paper in high school arguing that the much over-hyped Fight of the Century would only benefit the hucksters and eventually cause boxing to all-but disappear. He got an A+ from his Marketing teacher and boxing is no longer on Friday night television.
I still watch the Chicago White Sox leave three men on and lose. The team loses and the owner tries to squeeze taxpayers to buy him another stadium. Charles Comiskey was called a cheapskate who only cared for his ticket buyers, by leftist grifters like Studs Terkel. Who did Old Studs take care of? Studs.
Sports is witnessed at the high school level alone for this fan. The Pros all are posturing loudmouths or cyborg thugs, like the Fox Sports NFL icons.
Once upon a time, the NFL featured men like Gayle Sayers who in five years dominated the game with over 9,000 yards in rushing. This quiet and very funny man spent a few years at Leo High School trying to develop a computer technology program. I had the pleasure and great honor to spend some time with this legend and his lovely wife. Mr. Sayers commanded the young men of Leo High School to “never spike the football, dance or play the fool in the endzone. Hand the ball to the referee and act like you have done this before and that damn well plan to do it again.”
I have yet to see a man in full, such as Gayle Sayers, in any professional these days. Given my clumsy and comical participation in sports as a player and coach, I developed a deep regard for athletes, especially wildly gifted combatants gifted with humility and grace.
College sport has become a revolting spectacle dominated by long television commercials for Mando or Lume and DEI family friendly beverages, or EVs. Except for University of Iowa Women’s Basketball. Really, it is Caitlin Clark of the Hawkeyes. Caitlin Clark just might be the retro-revolution in Sports. One brilliant writer noted that Caitlin Clark is to sport, as Taylor Swift has been to Pope Music, but with more talent. I wish I had said that.
The ancient Greeks saw agonistes (a person’s struggle in contention) as the key to wisdom, athleticism and kindness through sporting competition. In Caitlin Clark we see all three of these values on the hard wood. Not so with too many college and professional athletes these days. Anymore there is a tendency to provide spectacle and for individuals to celebrate only themselves. That is why millions of people have turned off the channel. Millions more, however, buy the hype and gamble away the house money on the Sweet Sixteen or Superbowl. Many millions of people buy the products using sports to sell body crack deodorants, insurance policies, beer and politicians.
We are the latter-day Romans feasting on our comforts and wasting our souls. The Romans favored spectacle over competition and packed the circus maximus on race days or screamed for more blood in the Coliseum. Some private high schools have become gladiator schools with blue chip athletes paid for by their boards of directors and abrogating the notion of student athlete in favor of a top ten placement in the high school rankings. Vale Virtus!
Last year, my cynical bones were rattled by a girl from Iowa, a Catholic high school graduate with a mom and dad, without piercings or tattoos and the natural hair color God bestowed upon her. Caitlin Clark reminded me of the many hundreds of young women who compete in amateur sports, but with a tad more grit, grace and gravitas born of thousands of hours in the practice of basketball. She is a joyful genius on the hardwood court. She is Ted Williams, Peggy Fleming, Larry Byrd and Michael Jordan wrapped in a lanky frame with a ponytail.
This year’s Big Ten triumph and the very combative Sweet Sixteen brawls witnessed the grace and gravity of Caitlin Clark, supported by her family and the growing legion of CLARKIES, an homage to Taylor Swift’s cognominal. Caitlin Clark is poised to be the number one draft pick of WNBA. Personally, I hope that she will remain with University of Iowa, as her product endorsement will far surpass a Women’s Basketball League salary and her reputation as a singular role model for boys and girls as an athletic icon will only be burnished. Lastly, I would love to witness a 2025 repeat, as I have little doubt that Iowa will take the NCAA crown. That would also be an opportunity to answer last year’s insult – not that Caitlin Clark harbors any such meanness. That is for a cluck like me.
In last year’s match-up with LSU, I watched this phenomenon of a player take the taunting and insults of her graceless opponents with a regal dignity. This year the graceless LSU Tigers walked off the court before the playing of the National Anthem, only to have Ms. Clark pump up forty-one points with twelve assists. Payback is a dignified young woman,
FINAL UPDATE: April 7, 2024, South Carolina 87-75 defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes. A very classy Gamecock’s Coach Dawn Staley called Caitlin Clark a GOAT- Greatest of All Time. Coach Staley is more than correct.
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Born November 8, 1952 in Englewood Hospital, Chicago Illinois, Pat Hickey attended Chicago Catholic grammar and high schools, received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Loyola University in 1974, began teaching English and coaching sports at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL in 1975, married Mary Cleary in 1983, received a Master of Arts in English Literature from Loyola in 1987, taught at La Lumiere School in Indiana from 1988-1994, took a position as Director of Development with Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond, IN and then Leo High School in Chicago in 1996. His wife Mary died in 1998 and Hickey returned with his three children to Chicago’s south side. From 1998 until 2019, it became obvious that Illinois and Chicago turned like Stilton cheese on a humid countertop. In that time, he wrote a couple of books and many columns for Irish American News. When the kids became independent and vital adults, he moved to Michigan City, Indiana, where he job coaches Downs Syndrome and Autistic teens in LaPorte County. He walks to the Michigan City Lighthouse every chance he gets.
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