I am a Maryland resident who once prevented a young football player from dying by heat stroke. My actions were not valiant. I simply knew the symptoms and when I observed them, I did what the University of Maryland football staff did not do for Jordan McNair—immediately called for an ambulance.
The headline news is that the football coach at the University of Maryland is fired, the chair of the Board of Regents quit, and the president of the university will retire over the death by heat illness of McNair, a 19-year-old Maryland football player. The school’s sizable, highly paid staff of coaches and athletic trainers either did not know the basic symptoms of heat stroke or did not care—they waited far too long to call for help. Then there was an elaborate cover-up that last week collapsed of its own weight.
These events made me reflect on my own experience. A decade ago, I coached the middle-school affiliate of a large public high school in Maryland. I knew heat stroke and concussions are disturbing threats to young football players, so I enrolled in a seminar on these topics, held in 2008 at Good Counsel High School. Good Counsel was the home of Maryland’s winningest-ever high school coach, Bob Milloy, who was a strong advocate of health protection in football. (Bob retired in 2017.)
In 2008, the state of Maryland did not require prep coaches to be informed about management of heat illness and brain injury—now the state does—so I signed myself up on my own. I felt that to direct football players without understanding these threats would be reckless. Heat illness is the leading cause of death for young athletes.
At the seminar, a Johns Hopkins physician taught a group of coaches why heat stroke occurs, how the symptoms present, and proper first-aid response. He drilled into our heads that the key word was immediate. See the symptoms? Call 911 immediately. Heat stroke causes temperature to rise in the internal organs, with organ failure next. The condition places victims into the “golden hour” situation also associated with traffic crashes and gunshot wounds. Get the victim hospitalized in less than an hour, and chances are good. After more than an hour has passed—not so good.
Of course life cannot be made risk-free. But, “heat stroke death during supervised activities is 100 percent preventable,” the doctor told the seminar, so long as coaches and trainers act in a responsible manner.
A year later, in 2009, I was pitching in during the high school’s varsity grueling two-a-days. (Like many states, Maryland has since restricted August two-a-days, which is a wise policy in any hot or humid climate.) After wind sprints, a freshman began to stagger, then collapsed. Like McNair of the University of Maryland, he was significantly overweight—the group which, I’d learned at the seminar, is most likely to suffer heat illness.
I examined the young man, whom I’ll call Jamaal. (He was a minor at the time.) He couldn’t look me in the eye. His skin was dry as parchment. Dry skin is a bad sign: during heat stroke the victim does not sweat, which causes the internal organs to become hotter. His face had turned gray. You may think that an African American cannot look gray. Trust me, this can happen—and it’s a warning. Jamaal kept saying, “I can’t feel my hands!” Loss of feeling in the extremities is another symptom.
I shouted to another coach who I knew had a phone (mine was in the car) to dial 911 and report heat stroke. I ripped Jamaal’s football equipment and shirt off—victims must be cooled by any means available. I and others poured on Jamaal anything cold we could find. We sent boys to the edges of the field to guide the EMTs to Jamaal’s location.
It was 10 minutes from the moment Jamaal collapsed to when he was in an air-conditioned ambulance on an IV. Eighty-seven minutes passed between when McNair became symptomatic and when he was in an ambulance.
Jamaal recovered and was discharged from the hospital the following day. McNair died in a hospital; even a liver transplant could not save him.
At the high school, everyone around Jamaal reacted quickly and responsibly, placing the player’s health above all other concerns. At the University of Maryland, coaches and trainers dragged their feet while arguing amongst themselves. More than an hour went by between McNair’s symptoms and the people in charge so much as placing the first 911 call.
McNair died last spring; the University of Maryland has spent the intervening months trying to avoid accountability for its failures. Last week head coach DJ Durkin finally was fired and James Brady, head of the Board of Regents, resigned in disgrace. Brady led a deeply bizarre attempt to reinstate Durkin—placing football ahead of both academics and health—and even to reinstate the trainers who failed so miserably.
Certified athletic trainers operate under a standard similar to the Hippocratic Oath. Yet the university’s own report asserts that when McNair collapsed, Maryland’s head football athletic trainer, Wes Robinson, “yelled across the field to ‘get him the f— up.’” An athletic trainer who not only failed a dying man—instead, yelled at him—is an absolute disgrace.
Was Durkin to blame for mismanagement of the care of McNair? The public version of the university’s report never makes clear whether the head coach was present, a puzzling omission. But as the boss, Durkin should bear responsibility for the failures of his subordinates (respondeat superior is the 10-dollar legal term for this.) Instead, Durkin went to the Board of Regents demanding his privileges be restored, so his career would not suffer. This was the action of an unprincipled man. When Durkin briefly resumed command of practice, some players walked out.
Everyone associated with the University of Maryland football program should feel guilt and everyone on the Board of Regents should feel shame. The Board’s maneuver to force out the university president in order to exalt the football coach was so blatantly awful that once announced, it could not withstand the light of day for even 24 hours.
That the Maryland Board of Regents believed dismissing the university president in order to placate the football boosters was a good idea was so bizarre that a housecleaning is in order. Maryland chooses a governor today at the polls. The winner should dismiss the entire roster of regents and bring in people who care about academics and health.
Everyone in an insider position at the University of Maryland, other than president Wallace Loh—who ultimately defied the regents by firing Durkin—put power and money ahead of academics, even ahead of human life. This places the University of Maryland on the contemporary collegiate roster of shame with Penn State, Baylor, and Michigan State. The University of Maryland needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
Durkin and Robinson should never work in athletics again. In 2009, a high school football coach was acquitted of criminal charges in the heat-stroke death of a player; the coach returned to high school teaching but not to coaching, which was a fair resolution. No more association with athletics is the fair resolution of Durkin’s and Robinson’s culpability.
Reassessment of the University of Maryland’s accreditation has begun in response to last week’s institutional meltdown at College Park. Accreditation agencies are widely viewed as rubber stamps. Will the Middle States Commission on Higher Education show that it’s part of the solution, not part of the problem?
Stats of the Week #1. When Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes played each other in college, they combined for 1,279 yards passing and 125 points. Sunday, when they met in the pros, they combined for 646 passing yards and 58 points—half as much.
Stats of the Week #2. Carolina is on a 10-0 home streak.
Stats of the Week #3. The Chargers are on a 6-1 stretch.
Stats of the Week #4. Buffalo quarterback Nathan Peterman, who has thrown one touchdown pass and seven interceptions this season, has a passer rating of 30.7. If every throw a quarterback makes clangs to the ground incomplete, his rating is 39.6.
Stats of the Week #5. The Bills held the Chicago Bears to just 190 yards of offense, just 11 first downs—and lost by 32 points.
Stats of the Week #6. The Raiders have been outscored 6-68 in the fourth quarter.
Stats of the Week #7. Todd Gurley has scored a touchdown in 12 straight regular season games.
Stats of the Week #8. The Patriots are on a 10-0 streak at home.
Stats of the Week #9. Jon Gruden and Chip Kelly, the highest-paid new head coaches in the NFL and NCAA, are a combined 3-14.
Stats of the Week #10. From the point TMQ predicted they would reach the Super Bowl to the point TMQ retracted the prediction, the Texans were 4-15. Since the point TMQ flipflopped and said they would not reach the Super Bowl, the Texans are 6-0.
Sweet Pair of Plays. Kansas City faked a toss right then threw a screen left; Kareem Hunt took the screen 60 yards for a touchdown. Carolina faked an end around right then threw a screen left; Christian McCaffrey took the screen 32 yards, setting up a touchdown. In both these actions, the key was that the guy on the right sold the fake by looking at the quarterback and stretching out his hands, acting like he was about to receive the ball.
Sour Play in the Headliner Game. New Orleans leading 38-35 with 4:08 remaining, LA/A had the hosts facing 3rd-and-7 deep in their territory. A stop and a punt, and the Rams are positioned for the late drive to remain the sole undefeated club.
Presnap, New Orleans lined up with double stacks—two wide receivers, one behind another on each side of the field—plus a tailback in the backfield next to Drew Brees. In the last decade the double-stack has become a common NFL look, yet for some reason, the Rams’ secondary was confused. On the left side as Brees faced the line of scrimmage, Rams cornerback Marcus Peters was shouting and gesturing at Rams nickelback Nickell Robey-Coleman. It got so bad that Peters turned away from the line of scrimmage to shout at Robey-Coleman.
Never turn your back on Drew Brees!
Seeing the confusion, the New Orleans quarterback audibled to sending his tailback in motion wide left, that is, toward the spot where Rams defenders were arguing with each other rather than paying attention to the game. At the snap, receiver Michael Thomas blew straight up the field and neither Peters—who wore out his welcome at Kansas City by constantly arguing with teammates during the game—didn’t react to Thomas until the down was well under way. Brees lobbed a 72-yard touchdown pass to Thomas, and members of the 1972 Dolphins got out the Champagne flutes.
Rams head coach Sean McVay—seeing your defense confused, why didn’t you call time out? Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips—why didn’t you call time out? LA/A had two time outs. In order to conserve time outs, the Rams allowed the icing play.
Sweet ‘n’ Sour Plays in the Headliner Game. In the first quarter at New Orleans, Saints tailback Alvin Kamara snuck out of the backfield in the right flat then cut up the field for a 16-yard touchdown pass. New Orleans coaches noticed that LA/A’s defense did not react properly to an unexpected receiver in the flat—which would become a theme for the contest.
In the second quarter, New Orleans threw the same action to Kamara again, for a gain to the red zone. Then the Saints came out in an I-backfield with a fullback—a formation they don’t often use—suggesting power run. Brees play-faked. Tight end Ben Watson blocked as if for a power run—then shot into the right flat, uncovered, for a touchdown. Sweet, sweet, and sweet for the home team. Sour for the Rams defense, which was fooled three times in the first half with the same basic action.
Romney-Obama 2012 Was a Dignified, High-Minded Campaign. Whatever Happened to That America? Mitt Romney is a candidate for the Senate from Utah and seems likely to be on his way to Capitol Hill. Romney did not continue using the wonderfully goofy PAC name from his 2012 presidential bid—Restore Our Future. How can we restore something that hasn’t happened yet? If Tuesday Morning Quarterback had a PAC, it would be Revise Our Past.
Fortune Favors the Bold! Scoring to pull within 41-40 in the final seconds at Texas, West Virginia went for the win. Sportsyak called this a huge gamble—actually it was playing the percentages. Proceeding to overtime is a 50/50 proposition, and coaching lore holds (rightly or wrongly) that the home team usually prevails in overtime. The Mountaineers’ red-hot Xbox offense averaged 7.7 yards per snap on the day. Three yards for victory—go win the game!
First West Virginia lined up with four guys wide left—a “quad.” Texas immediately called time out. The Longhorns having seen the left quad, West Virginia then lined up with a quad right and threw a quick slant left that scored, but zebras ruled Texas had again called time just before the snap. West Virginia then lined up with the quad right—this is the third attempt at a deuce play!—and had the lone receiver left “drag” across the middle to move the safety and leave the left side totally open. The Mountaineers quarterback then ran left for two points and victory.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said after the game that as the Mountaineers began their final drive, he promised the team that if they got a touchdown, they’d go for the deuce to win. This kind of thing fires football players up—it’s another indication that fortune favors the bold.
Rams at Saints tied at 14, LA/A facing 4th-and-4 on the New Orleans 16, Sean McVay called a fake field goal. The runner did not reach the line-to-gain, turning the ball over to New Orleans. But bold thinking was in order since New Orleans was likely to put up a lot of points, as it did.
Deep-Freeze the Phrase “Cold Open.” The initial skitch of Saturday Night Live is perfect bite-sized entertainment for smart phones. But why does the media insist on calling this moment a “cold open”? It’s not!
The phrase cold open can mean “no logo or title card before the action begins,” but in this meaning, most television shows are cold-open. In stage terms, cold open means when a performance simply starts, without fanfare or warmup. Most stage plays, for example, are cold-open—the house lights fall and the play commences.
SNL emphatically does not cold-open in this manner. Before the clock hits 11.30 P.M. Eastern time, young comics take turns warming up the audience. Network late-night shows—whether live like SNL or the “live to tape” format of, say, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—also are preceded by comics or musicians warming up the audience.
Why does the press continue to call what happens when SNL goes on-air a “cold open?” Perhaps the MSM hive mind thinks this makes Saturday Night Live sound more exciting. Perhaps the people who write about live comedy for the major media have not, themselves, actually attended a live comedy performance. But please MSM, no more “cold open” references.
Internal Rules of The Weekly Standard Require Packers Coverage. On deadline day, Green Bay traded away one of its best players, safety Ha-Ha Clinton-Dix. The Packers knew they would lose him to free agency during the offseason. But now they’ve lost him for the 2018 stretch run! All Green Bay received was a fourth-round draft choice in 2019. This was a modest price considering that if the team had kept Clinton-Dix through season’s end then he signed elsewhere, Green Bay probably (though not certainly) would have received a fourth-round draft selection via the league’s mysterious compensation process.
All the Packers accomplished by offloading an important starter was becoming certain, rather than merely likely, to get a midround choice in the 2019 draft. They can use the pick to try to find a player like Ha-Ha Clinton-Dix.
Sunday night at New England, the decisive down was a fourth quarter 55-yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady to Josh Gordon. (Enjoy Gordon while you can, Flying Elvii faithful—he’ll turn back into a pumpkin soon.) On the snap, Brady faked a hitch screen left as Gordon faked a block; then Gordon ran a go-route up the left sideline. All the defensive backs on that side bought the fake, charging toward the line of scrimmage and leaving Gordon alone. Between the trade of Clinton-Dix and an injury to the Packers’ other veteran safety, Kentrell Brice, everyone on the playside was inexperienced. Tell me again why it made sense to offload the experienced Clinton-Dix?
Year of the Geezer Quarterback. Tom Brady, 41 years of age, has now defeated the Buffalo Bills 29 times, the most victories ever by an NFL quarterback versus a specific team. As a Buffalo expat, I can assure you that it feels like Brady has beaten the Bills 129 times. As noted by John Kryk of the Toronto Sun, in the current century, Brady has won more games in Buffalo than any Bills starting quarterback.
Phillip Rivers, 36 years of age, now has 200 consecutive NFL starts. Brett Favre, Eli Manning, and Peyton Manning are the only other quarterbacks to reach this milestone, and all surpassed 200 as geezers, in athletic terms—at least 35 years old.
Drew Brees, 39 years of age, versus the Rams had his 22nd game with four touchdown passes and no interceptions. That ties Brady for most four/zero games by an NFL quarterback. Both achieved this as geezers.
Geezers Aaron Rodgers and Brady faced off on Sunday night. So far between them they have 32 touchdown passes versus just eight interceptions. After the contest was over, Brady had a 20-11 record versus other likely Hall of Fame quarterbacks; Rodgers was 7-7 by that comparison.
How Loh Can You Go? While University of Maryland president Wallace Loh emerged from last week’s institutional meltdown at College Park as the sole leadership figure not to make an idiot of himself, it bears remembering Loh has been associated with many football-related screwups in the past.
Loh was a motivating force behind the University of Maryland leaving the ACC for the Big 10, in order to get more football revenue. This move cost Maryland taxpayers $31 million. Basically the maneuver was a bookkeeping swindle—$31 million paid as a lump sum from taxpayers to obtain $7 million more per year in conference revenue the University of Maryland athletic department could squander. Loh had the nerve to say the college was changing conferences not for football reasons but to affiliate the University of Maryland with the Big 10’s academic reputation. By leaving the ACC, Maryland gave up affiliation with Duke University, one of the top academic institutions in the world and higher-ranked than any college in the Big 10.
What did the University of Maryland do with the new Big 10 revenue? Renovated the football stadium without drawing crowds. Terrapins football averaged less than 40,000 attendance last year, among the lowest in the Power Five. Saturday’s contest versus Michigan State drew an announced crowd of 31,735, and this low figure seemed inflated—much of the stands were empty. The school spent college funds defending University of Maryland football players accused of sexual assault.
The University of Maryland spent Big 10 money like crazy on recently departed football coaches including Randy Edsall and recently departed athletic directors including Kevin Anderson. If the suspension/reinstatement/firing of Durkin looks mismanaged, don’t forget how badly the dismissal of Edsall was botched. The University of Maryland signed him to a $7.5 million contract extension in July 2015 then fired him, with a lucrative buyout, a mere three months later. Loh approved this nutty sequence of events.
One thing that can be said in favor of the University of Maryland athletic department is that it wanted, in 2017, to revise health care procedures in a way that might have reduced risk to athletes of heat stroke. Loh torpedoed the idea.
Loh has specified that the University of Maryland continue to charge average students an NCAA-subsidy fee. Because the NCAA subsidy was controversial, the University of Maryland stopped breaking it down; now it’s rolled into a $1,944 annual fee the undergraduates pay for technology, NCAA athletics and shuttle buses. In the most recent reporting year, the University of Maryland told the Department of Education it made a $5.7 million profit on sports. The profit came entirely from the fee charged to students who don’t play NCAA sports, who take on more student debt so the Maryland football program has plenty of money to squander.
Squandering somebody else’s money is the only thing University of Maryland leadership is really good at. As Joe Patrice shows in Above the Law, the preposterous 24-hour reinstatement kabuki caused Maryland taxpayers to owe DJ Durkin $5.1 million, a payment that could have been avoided if the University of Maryland Board of Regents was even minimally competent.
The sole aspect of the University of Maryland that does not come across as bottom-of-the-barrel is The Diamondback, the student newspaper, which has produced strong beat coverage and enterprise reporting on the endless athletic department scandals. “Our student newspaper does a great job of reporting on how poorly our college is run” is, according to the Google universal translator, Discipulus nostri diurna facit magnum job de re collegium nostrum qui in quam male currere in Latin. Maybe that should become the new College Park motto.
The Football Gods Chortled. Just before intermission at Denver, Houston lined up to attempt a field goal. At the snap, Denver’s Vance Joseph called an icing time out—only to see the field goal miss. Granted a second chance, the Houston placekicker hit.
Adventures in Officiating. Early in the West Virginia at Texas contest, David Sills scored a long touchdown. In the end zone he pointed two fingers downward—an upside-down “hook ‘em Horns” gesture. Officials penalized West Virginia for taunting. Oh come on! Then on the PAT, West Virginia’s left tackle smacked a Texas player on the shoulder pads. That should have been a foul, but zebras tossed the West Virginian out of the game. Oh come on! The result was the Mountaineers kicked off from near their own goal line, and Texas started its drive already in West Virginia territory.
Sills, a star receiver, in 2010 was at the center of one of the most successful con jobs in contemporary sports history. At the age of 13, he was featured on Good Morning America, where he was introduced as the youngest person ever to receive an NCAA football scholarship—supposedly, to USC to play quarterback. ABC and its partner ESPN fell for this hook, line, and sinker.
NCAA rules prohibit football scholarship offers until senior year of high school. The 13 year old’s verbal commitment promoted by ABC and ESPN as an astonishing amazing story was total hokum: “Verbal commits” are not recognized by the NCAA and are unenforceable in all instances. Sills, of course, never attended USC. How Good Morning America allowed itself to be used by the promoter who offered the network Sills—and why ABC failed to do even the most rudimentary fact-checking—is detailed in my 2013 book The King of Sports.
A sidebar to the story is that Sills’s father, a wealthy businessman, put together a prep-style football team to showcase his son, and created an online diploma-mill operation that called itself a high school. The “school,” Eastern Christian Academy, located in northern Maryland, existed only when Sills was playing prep ball, folding as soon as he “graduated.” The NCAA accepted Sills’s “diploma” from Eastern Christian as legitimate—at best, one could say he was home-schooled. Most actual high schools in the region around Eastern Christian refused to play the “school,” since it was obviously a sham.
1972 Dolphins Get Another Year as Sole Tenants of Perfectville. Now an item I reproduce annually from my AutoText, changed only for team names and time stamp. My heirs will be using this item!
“At 7:35 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, as the Rams left the field in New Orleans mumbling ‘#@%*!’ under their breaths, corks popped. In one of the sweetest traditions in sports lore, on opening day of every NFL season, each surviving member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, sole perfect team in modern pro football history, sets aside a bottle of champagne to cool. And it’s genuine champagne from the French province of Champagne, not the boysenberry-infused sparkling-gewürztraminer wine-like substance that passes for bubbly these days. At the moment the stadium clock hits all-naughts for the vanquishing of the season’s last undefeated team, the 1972 Dolphins pull the corks, secure in the knowledge that they will reign as the sole perfect team for at least one more year.
Gentlemen of 1972, enjoy your annual draught. TMQ feels confident you will continue to sip champagne each season until you are called to meet the football gods, and greeted by song and feasting.”
The fake-Champagne reference has become a little off, considering how much wine culture in the United States has improved. This just shows that the 1972 Dolphins have been getting the last-undefeated treatment for a long time!
Next Week. Whoever wins today’s elections, please, tell me the losers don’t claim conspiracy and demand investigations. Nixon in 1960 and Gore in 2000 accepted the results of close elections that including some tallies nobody could be certain of. We need to get back to accepting that the winner has won.
