Rest In Peace, Jim Tunney

Jim Tunney died over the weekend at the age of 95.  He was a referee in the NFL from 1960 to 1990; he was an official just as the NFL was beginning to become a top TV attraction.  Tunney officiated three Super Bowl games – – Super Bowl VI, XI and XII.

Rest in peace, Jim Tunney.

I mentioned last week that LB, De’Vondre Campbell had refused to go into a game for the Niners and instead went to the locker room.  A friend sent an email comparing that situation to Antonio Brown who behaved similarly except that Brown made a show of his “retreat to the locker room” by removing his pads and walking slowly off the field without half of his uniform.  My friend’s point was that Brown never got “another chance” with an NFL team and since Brown was more of a standout at his position than Campbell is at his position, it might be very difficult for De’Vondre Campbell to find future NFL employment.

I think my friend is correct; Campbell is 31 years old, and this is his 9^th season as a linebacker in the league.  He was voted as an All-Pro in 2021 but over those 9 seasons he has only recorded 9.5 sacks.  Until last week, he was rather durable for a linebacker playing in 13 or more games in 6 of his 9 seasons.  As a defender you could describe him as “solid” and “productive”, but I doubt if you would climb to the level of “outstanding” or “great”.  And I think a player would have to be considered at least “outstanding” to be considered by another team after what has been described as Campbell’s behavior last Thursday night.

Google is really amazing.  In the recesses of my memory, I thought there had been another player who “retired” at halftime and just rode off into the sunset – – but I could not put a name or a situation to that memory.  So, I entered into Google:

• “NFL player retires halftime”

Indeed, my dim memory was correct; it happened.  In 2018, Vontae Davis was a CB with the Bills; he had signed a 1-year deal with the team in the offseason.  After giving up a TD pass in the first half of a game that season, Davis took himself out of the game, told coach Sean McDermott that he was “done” and then just disappeared from football.  Davis never tried to come back to the NFL and there is no indication that any teams reached out to him about a return.  So, there is another incident where a player left the game in medias res never to see the field again.  I suspect De’Vondre Campbell’s NFL career has come to a conclusion.

Moving on – – but staying on the general topic of “withdrawing” …  The Independence Bowl game was scheduled to be Marshall University versus Army.  The NCAA transfer portal managed to attract at least 25 players from the Marshall roster and those players were not going to play in that minor bowl game and risk injury there which would negatively impact on their attractiveness in that portal.  No problem, all the bowl organizers have to do is to invite another team and stage the game.  Except there is one little glitch; when Marshall recused itself from the game, there were no other “six-win teams” – – i.e. bowl eligible teams – – waiting for an invitation to the game.

So, the NCAA got to dig into its arcane rulebook to identify the team that had won 5 games in the season and among all the “5-win teams” it had the best record of having team members make academic progress toward a degree from the school.  Yes, the fantasy of the “student-athlete” lives on in 2024 alongside all the NIL money and the transfer portal which translates into universal free agency among players.

The replacement for Marshall will be La-Tech which finished the season with a 5-7 record.  It is good to know that the players on that team are making academic progress toward their degrees because the La-Tech schedule from last year is unimpressive at best.

• La Tech finished 4-4 in CUSA games.  The fifth win was against a Division 1-AA opponent.
• La Tech played 5 games against teams that were on my SHOE watch list at some point last season.  Their record in those 5 games was 3-2.
• Unimpressive …

Finally, for no obvious reason, I want to close today with this pronouncement from Sigmund Freud:

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………