Leading Off — NFL training camps no longer just about football
Richard Oliver:
Web Posted: 06/18/2007 12:06 AM CDT
S.A. Express-News
When I was an idealistic youngster, still dreaming that I would someday grow up to quarterback the Cowboys, Christmas would roll around each year in July.
That's when Dallas would kick off training camp.
The storied franchise would take the field at some unknown outpost called Thousand Oaks, and the dispatches from that foreign soil would arrive in frustrating snatches.
Before there was SportsCenter, CNN or the NFL Network, a scrub-faced kid in Corpus Christi had to settle for a morning newspaper article or local TV to glean any information on his favorite team.
The updates, far too brief, served as bread crumbs for a starving fan.
Unable to see Roger Staubach in action, I'd settle instead for imagination, dancing around my grandmother's shrubs as if they were enemy linemen and flinging a football at a palm tree as if it were "Bullet" Bob Hayes.
As the Cowboys sweated in California to ready for a Super Bowl run, a young boy three states away sweated in concert in the South Texas heat, preparing in his own fashion.
Looking back today, it seems so idyllic. Ignorance served as fuel for allegiance.
I didn't have a clue about Lance Rentzel's notorious marriage to actress Joey Heatherton, Duane Thomas' intimidating surliness, coach Tom Landry's plasticene mannerisms or the drugs and steroids that bedeviled NFL rosters.
All I saw, from nearly 1,400 miles away, were stars wearing the Star.
It's different now, of course.
As we prepare in San Antonio for the Cowboys' arrival at the Alamodome next month, a visit that will be chronicled by more news outlets than there are roster hopefuls, it's become about so much more than football.
We already know full well about quarterback Tony Romo's flirtations with singers and starlets, Terrell Owens' self-serving blather and enough peripheral minutiae to clog the throat of a sportscaster.
Ignorance? Ah, today we see the bliss of it.
Training camp is upon us, in the truest sense. Far from starving, we are engorged by it all before the first whistle.
It's enough to make a weary fan who once was a wide-eyed boy dance around my living-room couch as if it were a defensive end and fling a football, one more time, like the old days.
Straight through my television set.
Web Posted: 06/18/2007 12:06 AM CDT
S.A. Express-News
When I was an idealistic youngster, still dreaming that I would someday grow up to quarterback the Cowboys, Christmas would roll around each year in July.
That's when Dallas would kick off training camp.
The storied franchise would take the field at some unknown outpost called Thousand Oaks, and the dispatches from that foreign soil would arrive in frustrating snatches.
Before there was SportsCenter, CNN or the NFL Network, a scrub-faced kid in Corpus Christi had to settle for a morning newspaper article or local TV to glean any information on his favorite team.
The updates, far too brief, served as bread crumbs for a starving fan.
Unable to see Roger Staubach in action, I'd settle instead for imagination, dancing around my grandmother's shrubs as if they were enemy linemen and flinging a football at a palm tree as if it were "Bullet" Bob Hayes.
As the Cowboys sweated in California to ready for a Super Bowl run, a young boy three states away sweated in concert in the South Texas heat, preparing in his own fashion.
Looking back today, it seems so idyllic. Ignorance served as fuel for allegiance.
I didn't have a clue about Lance Rentzel's notorious marriage to actress Joey Heatherton, Duane Thomas' intimidating surliness, coach Tom Landry's plasticene mannerisms or the drugs and steroids that bedeviled NFL rosters.
All I saw, from nearly 1,400 miles away, were stars wearing the Star.
It's different now, of course.
As we prepare in San Antonio for the Cowboys' arrival at the Alamodome next month, a visit that will be chronicled by more news outlets than there are roster hopefuls, it's become about so much more than football.
We already know full well about quarterback Tony Romo's flirtations with singers and starlets, Terrell Owens' self-serving blather and enough peripheral minutiae to clog the throat of a sportscaster.
Ignorance? Ah, today we see the bliss of it.
Training camp is upon us, in the truest sense. Far from starving, we are engorged by it all before the first whistle.
It's enough to make a weary fan who once was a wide-eyed boy dance around my living-room couch as if it were a defensive end and fling a football, one more time, like the old days.
Straight through my television set.
posted by The Gryphon at 6:28 PM
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