Your Bag of Nothing for Monday, September 30, 2024
Thirty days has September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty-one,
BoyGeeding competed in a chess tournament at LD Bell High School. I don’t know why I never realized that the school is named after the founder of Bell Helicopter. He donated the land to the H-E-B Independent School District, and they named the school after him.
BoyGeeding had a friend stay the night, and they played video games most of the evening. One time, he was describing something to his friend, and he threw in a “boom!” like John Madden. Sure, the video game is still around, but I wonder if he has any idea that it was a Madden staple.
It’s kinda crazy looking at college football scores and seeing SMU beating the pants off of Florida State. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
In May, California’s “Metropolitan Oakland International” changed its name to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport” – despite the fact that San Francisco International Airport is just 30 miles (48 kilometers) away. There’s been rancor ever since.
A few interesting things I found out about Troy Aikman, and I refuse to believe him when he says yoga is the hardest thing he’s ever done:
His first job in the beverage industry was thanks to Barry Switzer:Barry Switzer, lined him up a summer job before he transferred to UCLA. Imagine this scene today: One of the most talented quarterbacks in the nation spending his offseason loading trucks, delivering cases, stocking shelves and building out displays in grocery stores across the state.
This is how he starts and ends his days. He’s 57. He hasn’t taken a warm shower in years. He starts each morning with a cold one and a 20-minute walk in low-level sunlight to set his circadian rhythm. He’s in bed by 9 p.m. unless he’s calling a game.
Yup, he still works out, hard:He lifts four days a week and adheres to a recovery routine that would probably make half the starting quarterbacks in the league feel guilty: cold plunges, stints in the sauna and hyperbaric chamber, plus regular red-light and plasma therapies.
He owns his own jet.
He didn’t have a magical evening after winning his first Super Bowl: A few hours later, the game’s MVP couldn’t find anyone to celebrate with. Aikman walked into the Cowboys party with his girlfriend at the time, looked around, saw nothing but fans wanting autographs and sponsors wanting photos — “Jerry (Jones) making money,” he says — and walked out. He went back to the hotel, looking for his teammates. His girlfriend fell asleep. He called room service and ordered some beer. He called his parents’ room. No answer. Called his sister’s room. No answer. “No way in hell I was going to bed,” he says. He ambled down to the lobby, bumped into some members of the Dallas media and threw back beers with them until the sun came up.
What current NFL coaches would he like to play for? There’s just no way I could play or root for Kyle Shanahan and the way he wears those flat brim caps. Ask Aikman which of the current coaches he’d like to play for, and his answers aren’t all that surprising: Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LeFleur.
I really wish this was on tape or at least be able to get the details of it. A few years ago, he and Buck were standing on the sideline during a Cowboys walkthrough, prepping to call a game the next day. One of the coaches asked Aikman if he wanted to take a few snaps with the scout team. Are you kidding? He stepped into the huddle, on the wrong side of 50, determined to torch Dallas’ first-team defense. “I’m gonna challenge them,” he told Buck. “You don’t run the scout team to be bad.”
I don’t usually read the comments on articles, but these two stood out:
Troy came over to NFL Europe when I was working there, sent by FOX to be auditioned in the booth just as players were by their teams on the field. The general concensus was that he wouldn’t have the personality, but he was a natural and was very easy going. When he arrived in Scotland for a Claymores game he had a handler from FOX who had sent an emails of do’s and don’t’s with regard to his activities, but Troy was happy to meet the fans, become one of the team, etc. He refused to be ushered towards the front of the buffet line and just waited with everyone else. In London where the FOX crew was based, he’d go to their favorite haunt Waxy O’Connors in Soho and wasn’t pestered by people as most didn’t know who he was and was very relaxed.
Years ago, at The Masters, I had an interaction with the Iceman, Nick Faldo. He was about six feet away, standing over a putt, when the woman next to me tried to bury a sneeze into her partner’s back. We were all pretty sure Faldo was going to come at us with his putter, but he stopped, turned to us with a smile, and reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to her. Then sank the putt. I bring this up because our perceptions of others are often wrong, and I have always had a hard time reconciling my impressions of Troy Aikman on the field and Troy Aikman in the booth. I no longer do, and I thank you for that. And the last paragraph speaks to my favorite Go Fast Don’t Die t-shirt: Peace in the Process, Joy in the Journey.
