We're all the butt of a blond joke

     A new poll says that voters prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a margin of 54-41.
     Or to put it in terms my fellow denizens of the AP stylebook will understand: The blonde is leading the blond.
     I'm paraphrasing Jesus' warning about the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14) because I think He appreciated puns and I trust that He forgives mine. And I don't want to see my country wind up in the ditch.
     For what it's worth, we the people evidently prefer a white-haired President. The poll indicates that Americans favor Bernie Sanders 56-40 over Trump, 57-39 over Ted Cruz, and 50-46 over John Kasich. Let's make America gray again.
     In the most inexplicable and implausible matchup, Americans prefer the cowlicked Kasich 51-41 over the blond* Clinton—despite the fact that on Tuesday night, he got less than five percent of the votes cast in Indiana. (The CNN/ORC poll was completed May 1, before Cruz and Kasich dropped out of the campaign.)
     * AP style, which is the abiding conscience of newsrooms nationwide, is as perplexed as the rest of America when it comes to blonde vs. blond. Here's how the stylebook guides us:

     In other words, Hillary is a blonde with blond hair.
     Is America ready for a blond(e) president? I looked it up, and Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were blond before they were bald. Straight-talking Harry is looking pretty good right now, just as he did in the Nixon era when the band Chicago recorded this ditty: America needs you, Harry Truman (click to listen). It ends with this plea:
     "Harry, is there something we can do to save the land we love?"

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EQUAL TIME: Thomas Jefferson has been the only redhead in the White House. (By the way, redhead is now acceptable AP style, though it wasn't in the bygone days when Red Parker coached at Clemson.)

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And if you are inclined to vote brunette, remember that Melania Trump has birther issues.

The Buckeye bracket-buster: Injustice for a good cause

     The college football playoff turned out almost exactly as I predicted and even better than I hoped.
     No, I didn't foresee The Ohio State University's championship, with all its rich story lines and its 245-pound definite article.
     I didn't care who won, and I watched anyway. That's progress. What intrigued me more than the teams was the way the entire playoff process played out—a process designed to fail and yet destined to give us something bigger and better.
     Raise your hand if you ever thought we could actually fit five conference champions into a four-team bracket. Here, have a buckeye—it will kill you if you try to swallow it. Seriously. 
     Smaller colleges with half the manpower have been thriving in 16-team playoffs for decades, but this is the first year the big boys have dared to play more than one post-season game. 
     And here's what just happened: 
     1. Rankings became irrelevant. All the experts on the selection committee—including Peyton Manning's dad, Andrew Luck's dad, and George Bush's secretary of state—turned out to be no wiser than sportswriters or computers when it comes to judging the relative merits of college football teams. Yes, they saw through undefeated Florida State. We all did. But in their expertise, they judged Alabama to be the best team. Their lowest-ranked team won it all. And we trust them to tell us that the next-best team did not deserve a shot? 
     2. Bowls will never be the same. 

Bowls used to stand in the way of playoffs. Today, I'd wager that the rest of the bowls in the "New Year's Six" rotation (Cotton, Orange, Fiesta, and Peach) would sell their souls for the opportunity to be quarterfinal playoffs next year. The reason? The three playoff games on ESPN were the highest-rated programs in the history of cable television. The bowls that mattered drew audiences three or four times larger than the bowls that didn't. That's money left on the table. The playoffs barely had room for the Buckeyes, but bowls always have room for an extra buck. And TV is just part of the equation. Don't get me started about the empty upper deck at the Orange Bowl. The people have spoken: We'd rather watch games that count; games that are part of a greater drama.
     3. Separation of church and playoff. The committee ought to be thankful for the waffling Big 12 and private schools Texas Christian and Baylor, who lack political clout and have been raised to accept rejection by turning the other cheek. But what if Texas had been the alternative instead of Texas Christian? What if you took Christian out of TCU's name, dressed the Froghorned talent in Longhorn uniforms, called them Texas, and stacked them up against Ohio State. Now, that last selection becomes a lot more squirmish. Who do you want to snub: Texas with one loss to Baylor, or Ohio State with one loss to Virginia Tech? Either way, you face the wrath of a half million powerful alumni. Why not make everybody happy with a play-in game?
    4. Expanded playoffs will be here sooner rather than later. It won't take 12 years, like it did with the Bowl Championship Series. That's the hidden genius of the four-team playoff. It came with injustice built in, a flaw that demands to be corrected by expansion. College presidents who would never vote for an eight-team playoff now realize they will have to accept it. Whatever the future playoffs look like, they absolutely have to include the champions of the so-called "power five" conferences. The easy solution would be an eight-team playoff, including three at-large teams. Sixteen is not impractical, especially if you play the first round on campus. The silent majority in NCAA Division I already have a 24-team football tournament, for goodness' sake. Shorten the regular season to 10 or 11 games, add a cash-cow exhibition game in the spring, and make it happen. 
    We are making progress. Here it is just three weeks before national signing day, and we're still talking about actual games rather than descending into what my friend Kerry Capps calls "recruiting porn." Another weekend of real live college football in January wouldn't hurt anybody.

Worth his weight in goad

     Steve Spurrier and Dabo Swinney have so much fun coaching football that they would probably do it for free. But because they take their rivalry so doggone personally, they won't do it for less than $7 million.

Defending national champions are 0-3 in Death

Valley, as my son-in-law Pat and son Hall

witnessed in 2011 against Auburn. Here's

hoping that USC will make it 0-4 in 2016. First,

Spurrier has to win the 2015 national title.

     The stakes were raised after South Carolina and Clemson decimated the Big Ten in their recent bowl games. In a poll of their coaching peers, Spurrier's Gamecocks wound up ranked fourth in the nation, their highest finish ever. Swinney's Tigers were seventh, their best since 1981.

     Even in the nationally televised glow of their crowning victories, the coaches couldn't leave each other alone. 
     "Two Capital One bowls are pretty nice," Spurrier told Gamecock fans, "but the state championship ain't bad, either." 

     Two days later at the Orange Bowl, Dabo had his say: “We’re the first team from the state of South Carolina to ever win a BCS game."

     Dabo should know by now: Never try to outwit Spurrier. He unwittingly walked right into the Old Ball Coach's trap—the same way his teams have for the last five years.
     “I called Danny Ford," Spurrier responded, "and said, ‘Danny, does Dabo forget that Clemson in 1981 went down to the Orange Bowl, won the national championship and went undefeated?’ They didn’t call it a BCS bowl back then, but it was the same bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Orange Bowl has always been a major bowl.”

     So the Old Ball Coach goaded Dabo into dissing Danny.
     Well played, sir.
     Two weeks later, they made headlines again. On Jan. 16, after going 11-2 for the third straight season and 6-3 against Clemson, Spurrier got a $700,000 raise to $4 million. On Jan. 18, after going 11-2 for the second straight year but 1-5 against USC, Swinney got a $1 million raise to $3.1 million. And if his paycheck doesn't beat Spurrier's, at least his contract does, eight years to five.
     Tell me those deals had nothing to do with each other.
     And tell me this: Did Spurrier just goad Clemson into a long-term commitment with a coach he knows how to beat? Or in his own wincing words: "They're a good team that continues not playing very well against us."
     We don't need to debate whether a football coach is worth all that money, compared to the 150 teachers you could hire for $7 million. This is show-business. Coaches pay for themselves. Tickets sold at one home game will pay the head coach's salary.  After that, it's almost all free money, right? 
     Nor am I here to raise doubts about the longevity of the perpetually boyish Old Ball Coach, who will be 73 when his contract is up. He is already older than Woody Hayes was at his demise or Danny Ford is on his farm. Next year, Spurrier will be as old as Bear Bryant was when he died.
     Bobby Bowden was 70 when he won his second national championship. Reckon Spurrier would like to one-up him one more time? 
     The next time he beats Clemson, Spurrier will have as many victories in the state championship as Ford did. And he already told us he has Danny's number.
     Don't misunderstand my fascination and grudging respect for Spurrier. My heart is with Clemson, where I grew up. I believe in what Dabo's doing. I admire his passion and values. Someday he will put USC in its place. But right now, Spurrier owns the stage. He has earned the last word.
     It's not like he's just picking on Clemson, of course. Spurrier still loves to needle Tennessee, where he grew up as the son of a Presbyterian preacher. Even his own players are not spared. 
     Enjoy this list of Spurrier's zingers from the past season, and these revealing comments at his daddy's funeral. 
     In the out-of-proportion world where Spurrier rules, there is never a shortage of fresh material.
     Here's some more: Over the next eight years, Clemson will pay Dabo $4 million just for the license to use his trademarked nickname on coffee mugs, poker chips, and other merchandise. That's the same price USC will pay Spurrier to coach next year.
     Tell me the Old Ball Coach won't have a field day with that.
     Tell me which is the better investment.
     Or as they say down at the Capital One Bowl: What's in your wallet? 

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LEST WE FORGET

• The Capital One Bowl seems a lot nicer to Spurrier now than it did back when the game was called the Citrus Bowl (the stadium still is) and Peyton Manning was playing there. You can't spell Citrus without UT? Well, the same goes for USC. I was surprised Dabo let that one pass, especially since Tennessee is a sore spot for Spurrier and ruined his shot at the SEC and BCS championship. 
• Anybody remember the last coach to beat Danny Ford at Clemson? Yes, Spurrier got the last word there, too. He was 4-2 against Ford, 1-2 while at Duke and 3-0 at Florida.
• The best record of any long-term coach in the state championship is 7-2 by Bobby Bowden's boy. Tommy Bowden went 5-1 against Lou Holtz and 2-1 against Spurrier. And it was his team (under Dabo's interim command) that owns Clemson's last victory against Spurrier. He beat the Gamecocks so often that he got taken for granted, and then he lost to Wake Forest and got fired. 
• Coaches' records in the state championship (updated through 2014 and ranked by winning percentage; counting ties the same as losses): Pell 2-0, Bowden 7-2, Hatfield 3-1, Ingram 2-1, Enright 9-4-1, Ford 7-3-1, Spurrier 6-4, West 3-2, Dietzel 4-5, Parker 2-2, Howard 12-16-2, Bass 2-3, Morrison 2-3-1, Woods 2-4, Swinney 2-5, Carlen 2-5, Scott 1-3, Giese 1-4, Holtz 1-5, Bell 0-1. 

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Frank Howard once told me the most he ever made at Clemson was $25,000. That would have been about four times what teachers like my mom earned during his final year, 1969. Coach Howard used to joke that he had a lifetime contract, but after he lost his last two to USC the administration declared him dead. We remember the Baron of Barlow Bend as an old man, but he was just 60 when he stepped aside as coach. 
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Here's a bit of Tim Bourret-esque trivia: William Christopher Swinney was born just two days before Coach Howard's last game in 1969. They would have liked each other. I often heard Coach Howard refer to "dat boy," the same Alabama colloquialism that got Dabo his nickname. 

'I've had ruder'

     Phone calls from telemarketers bring out the worst in me. Reflexively, I dig in my heels and oppose whatever they are selling. Sadistically, I like to toy with them.

     None irks me more than Charter cable, which employs legions of demons-on-commission to cold-call citizens and try to re-sell us on services we have cancelled:

     “Hello, I’m calling on behalf of Charter—may I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Layton?”

     Now if Mrs. Layton calls Charter, they won’t speak to her, because the bill is in my name, not hers. But the phone-bombers are under no such restrictions.

     “This is Mr. Layton.” I know what's coming next. 

     “May I verify that you are at least 18 years old?”

     Charter obviously doesn't know me, even though I have been a customer for most of 30 years. That should be verification enough. 

     Thirty years represents necessity more than loyalty. U-verse hasn't made it up my hill yet, and Dish can't see over my trees. Charter has a monopoly on ESPN and TBS, which is about all the Laytons watch, though we have to take several hundred others in the package. Occasionally we cancel some services, such as Internet or free HBO, which is our way of squealing when the monthly price ratchets too high. Right now, I am tolerating slower Internet from AT&T just to teach Charter a lesson.

     “Why do you need to verify my age? You don't ask if I'm 18 before your commercials try to sell me a beer. Besides, if you were really from Charter, you would know that I have been a customer more than 18 years.”
     “Sir, I am just following the script.”

     So I’m part of a script, playing a bit part in some drama that for all I know, is being broadcast live right now on Channel 942.

     I’ve gotten this call enough to know how to answer. I could tell them an age, but what does that verify? I could tell them I’m 17 and escape the call right there, but if I was really 17 I would pretend to be 18, so where does that leave me? 

     So I play along and ask the caller, “Can you verify how old you are?”

     The first time I tried that, the young man on the other end confessed that he was just 17. I was immediately embarrassed to be taking advantage of a kid trying to earn an honest buck. I simmered down, politely expressed my frustrations with Charter and asked him to relay my comments to management. He admitted that he couldn’t really do that, because he doesn’t actually work for Charter. He's just an independent salesboy. 

     I hung up the phone and hung my head in shame. Mrs. Layton may not be authorized to speak to Charter, but she has earned the right to tell me when I'm being childish. At that moment, I don’t think she would have vouched that I was acting 18.

     Just the other day, I got another call from a lady representing Charter. When she asked me to verify my age, I went off-script and asked her how old she was.

     “I’m 41,” she replied. 

     Well, shame on me. I meant to just ask her if she was over 18, but now I’ve gone taboo and asked a stranger her age.  So I took a deep breath and tried to muster the manners of a Southern gentleman. After all, I'm the last daddy in America who taught his kids to say “Yes Sir” and “No Ma’am” and don't call a policeman a cop.

     “Begging your pardon and bless your heart, ma'am. I know that you’re just doing your job. I’m sorry if I was rude.”

     “Oh, I’ve had ruder.”

     Well! I expected her to politely say, "That's okay" or "Apology accepted" or the ubiquitous "No problem"—which can stand in for everything from "You're welcome" to "You're rude."
     I never expected her to acknowledge my rudeness and then rank it as inadequate.
     Yet for the way I treated her, I deserved worse.
     If a telemarketer can bring me to shame, then what can I do but repent?

     Never again will I ask a telemarketer her age.

     Call me.

Nobody asked for MY opinion

     I've written and discarded several thousand words you will never read on the opinions expressed by Phil Robertson.
     Writing always helps me sort out my thoughts.
     Deleting my creations helps keep me humble.
     Besides ... nobody asked for my opinion. 
     That's different than Phil Robertson. The magazine formerly known as Gentleman's Quarterly sent Drew Magary all the way to West Monroe, Louisiana, to ask for Robertson's opinion.
     Specifically, the self-described milquetoast suburban WASP  reporter asked the duck-calling bristle-bearded church elder: "What, in your mind, is sinful?"
     Robertson answered in a way that was crude and awkward at first, but more thoughtful and compassionate if you followed him past the sound bite that has America fixated. (Read it for yourself, but be forewarned: the writer's language is much more vulgar than anything you've heard from Robertson himself.) Ahove all, he was honest, uncamouflaged, and unfiltered. Instead of a script, he tried to follow scripture.
     Answering an opinion question is not a hate crime. It should not be a firing offense.

     I wish that Robertson had not started with with the predictably explosive example of homosexuality. Among all of humanity's shortcomings, I don't think that's the one that tips God's scales.
     But how would you have expected Phil Robertson to answer that question?
     How would you have answered it?
     What, in your mind, is sinful?
     Before any of us casts the first stone, we need to wrestle with that bristly question ourselves.
     When Robertson tried to explain sin, he shot from the hip and misfired at first. He waded into a moral bayou and a scatological briar-patch where I wasn’t comfortable, either.

     But his last words on sin were as profound and on-target as the question itself: “Don’t deceive yourself.”
     Deception—whether from self or Satan—is the root of sin.
     If Robertson had answered the question any other way, he would have been deceiving us.
     And if we think Phil Robertson is the problem, we are deceiving ourselves.
     Nobody needs to be offended by redneck honesty or genuine Christian testimony. If you don't want to hear what Phil Robertson has to say, don't ask. Tune him out. Change channels. Ruin his ratings.
     But whenever we have the urge to silence someone, we might be wise to listen instead.

Save or sorry?

     Once upon a time, people all over town were willing to pay a few dollars a month to read the local newspaper at breakfast. They wanted insight, credibility, and box scores, so they put up with our lousy delivery and vain attempts at humor. For over 25 years, my paychecks depended on it.
     Back when I had a corner of the sports pages in Greenville, I contemplated a series of columns on the theme "Sunday School Lessons from Friday Night Football." If you know the characters and watch closely, you can find biblical examples on any given week on any high school football field—underdog David, self-destructive Sampson, stubborn Pharaoh, wrong-way Jonah, trash-talking Hamann, Daniel in the lions den, Chaldeans running up the score, and the weekly prodigal son. Cover a playoff game starring Isaiah Moses "I.M." Hipp, and you too may get religion.
     Of course, these storylines are not just limited to high school football. Big-league baseball games are just as ripe with material for morality plays, laments, proverbs, and parables.
     It might have gone something like this: 

     Mariano Rivera and Craig Kimbrel owe their fame to a Chicago sportswriter named Jerome Holtzman. In 1969, the same year that Rivera was born, Holtzman invented a statistic—the save—that exalted the relief pitcher and changed the way baseball is played.

Don Zimmer with Jerome Holtzman:
 Changing the face of the game,
not necessarily for the better.

     Rivera "saved" more victories than anyone in baseball history, and he did it with great dignity—the last player to wear Jackie Robinson's now-retired number 42.
     If Kimbrel hadn't flamed out, as relief pitchers often do, he might have broken Rivera's records. 
     Rivera didn't get his first of his 652 saves until he was 26 years old. Kimbrel already has 138 saves at age 25.
     But this is not a debate between game-savers—"saviors," if you will.
     For the moment, forget about Rivera. He had his day Sunday at Yankee Stadium.
     Instead, go back to Saturday at Wrigley Field, step into the shoes of Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, and make a do-or-die decision that brings to mind a lesson from the book of Hebrews: How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?

     Your team is on the verge of clinching first place in the National League East standings. Your pitcher, Kris Medlin, takes a 1-0 lead into the eighth inning. Then the Cubs scratch out a hit, putting the tying run on base.
     Pitchers used to be revered for completing games. If the starter took a shutout into the eighth inning, he deserved a chance to finish it. But you decide Medlin is out of gas. Nowadays, the pitch-count is on the TV screen, and tweeting yokels everywhere are ready to lynch you for leaving your pitcher in the game too long.
     You could bring in Kimbrel right now to save the game. But it's the eighth inning, which is reserved for the unfortunately labeled "setup man." It's an unwritten rule—a corollary to Holtzman's definition of a save—that Kimbrel only pitches the ninth.
     The trouble is, if your pitcher blows the lead in the bottom of the eighth, there will be no bottom of the ninth.
     Earlier this summer in Rivera's final all-star game, manager Jim Leyland faced a similar predicament, protecting a lead in the bottom of the eighth inning. Everyone, including Leyland, wanted to see the great "Sandman" in a save situation in the bottom of the ninth. But Leyland knew that if Rivera didn't pitch in the eighth, there was a chance he would not get to pitch at all. To Leyland's credit, he did not dawdle. Instead, Rivera pitched the eighth. So what if somebody else "got the save"? Leyland wasn't beholden to a statistic. It might have been anticlimactic, but it was sound baseball.
     Back to the Braves' dugout at Wrigley. You have the opportunity to call on one of history's greatest game-savers. And in the very moment your team needs salvation, you don't turn to your savior. Instead, you  bring in a journeyman (an ex-Angel, no less) who gives up a couple of hits and loses the game. The Braves fail to rally in the top of the ninth inning, and the bottom of the ninth never happens.
     In this case, it didn't matter much. The Braves had a safe lead in the standings, and they clinched the pennant the next day—with Kimbrel getting an easy "save" by not blowing a 5-2 lead.
     But next time?
     The moral of the story should be clear. Don't wait to call on your savior. You may not get another inning.

NEXT TIME?
     Sorry to be the prophet of doom, but "next time" came two weeks after I wrote this. On October 7, the Braves had a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the eighth of their playoff elimination game against the Dodgers. This time, there was no margin for error. Yet once again, they neglected their salvation. Gonzalez left Kimbrel idling in the bullpen and instead brought in a converted catcher who gave up a two-run homer, losing the game and ending their season.
    They never got to the bottom of the ninth.

FROM THE MOUND OF MISFIT THOUGHTS:

• During the course of a season, the Braves will pitch about 1,450 innings. Kimbel will account for less than 70 of those. Other pitchers will get 98 percent of the outs the Braves need. I've been a Braves fan since the 1960s and greatly appreciate Kimbrel, but I don't think that carrying two percent of the workload qualifies him for an award named after Cy Young, who had more complete games (749) than Rivera has saves (652).
• Other than the closer, is there any other sports hero who never plays when his team is behind? And when he comes in at start of the ninth inning, the slate is always clean, so he never has to pitch out of a jam. I'm more thankful for the guys who completed their eight-inning shift and earned us the lead. 
• What does Craig Kimbrel have in common with Moonlight Graham? Neither has ever  batted in a big-league game. Graham famously played only two innings in one game in 1905. Kimbrel has played 231 games without ever batting. Keep that record perfect for another 10 or 15 years—imagine a thousand games without a single at-bat—and maybe Kimbrel will earn a cool nickname of his own. Wink!