Before it's all college football, can we talk about the sport actually being played for a moment?
Skenes' emergence on mound highlights how much bigger a deal he ought to be
Note: This column is also appearing in The Norman Transcript today and for a brief moment, the Transcript is mentioned in the copy of the column. Please, don’t let it throw you. Also, thanks for reading.
Remembering the year Lincoln Riley chose not to bring Spencer Rattler to Big 12 media days, I salute Brent Venables’ choice to make Jackson Arnold available at SEC media days, which begin Monday, though Oklahoma won’t take it’s turn until Tuesday, right after Josh Heupel and Tennessee kick the day off.
Beyond that, though interested in what Venables, Arnold, Billy Bowman and Danny Stutsman will say to the media throngs making their way to Dallas, I’m not sure what I want them to say, only what I hope they won’t.
I hope they won’t take their cues from the Sooners’ New Year’s Day celebration — though it was only July 1 — the day joining the Southeastern Conference became official and the entire university lost all sense of proportion as though it had no idea what big time college football was or looked like because only now would it finally get to play it, which is patently absurd from a school that’s claimed seven national championships, but that’s what happened anyway.
Given that, I’m pulling a swerve, because it may be the last day a column like this makes sense, even though the whole of summer should be about baseball rather than NBA free agency, NFL minicamps and college football.
Indeed, the diamond must be written about, inspired by a headline you might have seen in Saturday’s Transcript: “Pittsburgh’s Skenes to start All-Star Game for NL after 11 major league starts.”
If I’m guessing, though I presume you know Pittsburgh has a baseball team called the Pirates, I’m also guessing “Skenes,” or “Paul Skenes” to very likely be a name you’re only hearing about now; or if it’s not, 50-50 it’s because you know his girlfriend, Olivia Dunne, the LSU gymnast who made a killing on social media — 5 million Instagram followers — before almost everybody else, who first appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in October of last year, an honor Skenes has yet to receive.
What I’ve got are three ways to make baseball a more engaging sport and of them one would have made Skenes a household name before ever becoming a pro, another might keep him in the game longer and the other’s just a good idea.
Here we go.
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