Role models in short supply

Published 12:09 pm Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Let’s face it, Martin Luther and Winston Churchill are dead, hence finding quality role models to look up to is daunting.

Fortunately, sports have been hammered into my soul forever, hence the overall genre from which to choose a role model significantly narrows the field.

Years back I watched O.J. run up and down a muddy field in Corvallis when his USC Trojans, rated No. 1 in the nation at the time, fell 3-0 to the Beavers. Simpson ran for more than 200 yards, yet never crossed the goal line nor flickered any inklings about becoming my role model. Shortly thereafter O.J. made big money hurdling turnstiles in airports, yet my resolve to aspire to someone greater prevailed. Not even the fact that my extremely old dictionary has a thumbnail photo of O.J. in it (and notes in its text that his football heroics were major) put me in O.J.’s camp.

As if he didn’t get enough press running the football, Simpson next appealed to viewers around the world when cameras in helicopters captured him trying to elude the police at low speed on California freeways. I’ve often wondered how many bucks O.J. paid lawyers to get him out of that pickle.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to surmise that O.J. is my anti-role model.

The antithesis of O.J., in my mind, is my all-time favorite sports figure, Bjorn Borg. On the tennis court, Borg was an exhibition of poetry in motion. He never lost his cool, simply wore out his opponents by methodically returning each and every shot returned to his side of the net, and consistently was smooth and fluid. A right hander, his two-handed backhand looked every bit as natural as his forehand and, if memory serves me, his comfort anywhere along the baseline was awesome.

A bucket list thing, I guess, I did see Borg play in person once later in his career during a professional exhibition match held in Portland. He wasn’t much different then than the many times I’d watched him win Wimbledon and the French Open on television, though maybe the headband and wrist bands were different.

Other than Bjorn Borg, there haven’t been many I’ve felt warmed enough by to consider being my role model.

My best sport, as a participant, was football. I was OK in high school, but probably my skills and definitely my body were not up to the challenge of college football. A few memories, like playing one game at the University of San Quentin, never will be repeated nor forgotten, yet reality outweighed aspirations when a second shoulder surgery was required.

The closest to a role model I experienced in those days was a brash football-playing dude from the University of Alabama named Joe Namath. As quarterback for the fledgling New York Jets, on January 12, 1969, Namath – after guaranteeing a Jets win three days before squaring off against the heavily favored Baltimore Colts – backed his words by engineering a shocking victory.

But that role model thing faded quickly when Namath tried to expand his horizons as an actor. Simply stated, Joe was bad.

A piece of football trivia in regard to that Super Bowl III: Who was the Colt QB who came off the bench late in the game, when the Jets led 16-0, to drive the Colts to their solitary touchdown?

Sorry, I’m not going to make it easy on you, but I guarantee if you know anything at all about football that you’ll recognize the name.

While you’re googling the answer, feel free to check out Luther and Churchill: being dead doesn’t erase one’s achievements.

Jabberwock II columnist Rocky Wilson is a reporter for the Chieftain.