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Author Archives: Kent Sterling
Top nine reasons fans are justified in leaving #iufb games at Memorial Stadium early
This is a crowd shot during the first half of an Indiana Football game. At least half those people will leave during halftime. And they won’t return.
Hard to blame Indiana University football coach Kevin Wilson for imploring fans to stick around for four quarters during games at Memorial Stadium. If I could see half of the listeners flip their radios off at 4:30p, I would be disappointed too.
Wilson asked fans to stick around this Saturday as the Hoosiers face another must-win non-conference game (when you play in the Big 10 East, all non-conference games are must-win if Indiana is to feel good about its chances to qualify for a bowl), “Our last six games, we’ve won four and lost two (including one in) double overtime, so why don’t we hang around for four quarters and see what happens, have a lot of fun and make this an exciting atmosphere.”
Wilson explained his team’s mediocre finish against Ball State by making a joke about the fans’ penchant for leaving early, “We played the first three quarters good. I don’t know if we had a lull. I think we probably played like our fans and just left in the fourth quarter, it looked like.”
There was also advice from Wilson as to how fans need to prepare for game day, “Those tailgates are still there. If you buy a good enough cooler, stuff will stay cold for you. Let’s ride out the second half, man. Let’s play ball.”
Wilson is right. It would be great if the fans stuck around. But they don’t, and there are good reasons for the exodus that occurs each and every halftime that have nothing to do with the on-field product or Wilson.
When I go to games as a fan, I leave early. It’s not a call made lightly, but it is an easy decision for the following eight reasons:
9 – Getting a wife or girlfriend to lock down for more than four hours in anything but perfect weather at a football game is impossible. Sitting in the rain or cold or heat for a woman who is willing to come along to an Indiana Football game is not happening for most women. That’s not a sexist comment, but an endorsement of their intellect. When my wife asks, “Can we leave and go to the bar to get something to eat and watch the rest of the game on TV?”, I find her intellect dazzling. My wife is a huge sports fan, but there are correctly imposed limits to her desire to sweat, freeze, or drip dry. Continue reading
Top 12 reasons to be patient evaluating Ryan Grigson and Chuck Pagano as Colts leaders
Andrew Luck leads the Colts to an early season (1st two games of a season) loss for the eighth time in 10 tries.
The 2016 Indianapolis Colts season appears to be little more than an extension to the disappointing 2015 season – one that began with Super Bowl dreams and ended with broken bones, torn ligaments, and a front office and coaching staff staring into the abyss.
General manager Ryan Grigson and head coach were saved from the gallows by a forgiving owner who believed they could find common ground and merge divergent philosophies to find a way to build a champion.
Two games into this messy campaign, the Colts are banged up and winless – a disappointment for fans who have known failure only three times in the 18 years.
Just two years ago, the Colts started 0-2 before righting the ship and marching into the AFC Championship, but while the math is equal, the situations are not.
Injuries, unpleasantness, and schematic oddities are the defining traits of this team, and just nine days into the season, many fans are screaming for a complete replate of the franchise from the front office to the coaching staff.
Here are the top 10 reasons demanding a clean sweep is premature after two games:
12 – What fun is losing faith on September 19th? Sure, the Colts might be a 5-11 team when January 2, 2017, rolls around, but this is September 19th with 14 games looming on the horizon. If the Colts can beat both the Chargers and Jaguars, they will be 2-2. That would put the Colts in a position to attack the remaining 12 games with hope for postseason success. Continue reading
Top 10 problems Colts need to solve to win a Super Bowl
What can Chuck Pagano do to help the Colts win? Plenty, but it starts with telling the truth to fans through the media.
As ridiculous as it is to write on September 13th – less than 48 hours after game one of 16 – the clock is ticking loudly on the 2016 Indianapolis Colts season.
If Matt Prater’s game-winning 41-yard field goal had sailed left as it looked like it might, we would be having a different conversation, but it didn’t and so the warts of the Colts 39-35 loss are being reviewed and dissected as the Colts prepare to visit the defending Super Bowl champions.
That gives the Colts five days from right now to clear their heads, get healthy, and prepare for a different level of challenge. Tall order for a team that lost to one of the NFL’s bottom feeders, allowing a mediocre offense to run up 37 points (the Lions offense does not get credit for the game ending safety).
Not a lot of time to fix a team that featured the best quarterback in week one of the NFL season and a bunch of guys.
Here are the top 10 challenges that require immediate or long-term attention from Colts players, coaches, and management in order to hang another championship banner at Lucas Oil Stadium:
10 – How about a 1,000 yard rusher for the Colts? It’s been almost a decade since the Colts had a running back eclipse the 1,000 yard barrier during a season. It’s unlikely to come this year as Frank Gore is the best bet, and would be the first man of his extreme years to run for a thousand yards since John Riggins more than 30 years ago. Gore was effective Sunday, averaging 4.2 yards per carry, but with only 14 runs he fell short of the yardage needed to be on pace to hit that target. Continue reading
Top 10 questions that are too early to ask about Indianapolis Colts
The Colts lost to a bad team yesterday, but it’s early in a season that will answer a lot of question through the next three months. No need to jump the gun.
That was bad.
Yesterday’s Colts game was disappointing. Losing to the Detroit Lions 39-35 in a home opener isn’t a disgrace, but it’s certainly not a result that excites a fanbase still mired in a hangover after a miserable 8-8 2015 season.
There was some good, but it wasn’t enough to beat a team expected to finish third in the NFC North – a team led by the coach who was replaced by Chuck Pagano, a team without an elite, well, anything, a team that the Colts need to beat if they are to be taken seriously as a playoff threat.
As the Colts head to Denver for a showdown with a defensive front that ravaged Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton on opening night, there are questions, a lot of questions, about the Colts ability to effectively compete throughout an entire season.
But here are some questions it is way too early to ask about the Indianapolis Colts:
10 – Are Lions running backs Ameer Abdullah and Theo Riddick the second coming of Ickey Woods and James Brooks? Abdullah and Riddick ran through the Colts defense for enough yards to earn bonus cardio points on their Fitbits. Each accounted for more than 100 yards in rushing and receiving combined as the Colts seemed to have grave difficulty tackling either. Both are nice players, but neither are thought to be headed to Canton.
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9 – Does Chuck Pagano understand timeouts can be taken with the play clock at :01? Pagano took a timeout with 1:15 left in the game and :38 on the play clock that allowed the Lions to conserve their own timeouts – assuming they would have called one. Either way, :37 (the time left when the Colts scored what should have been a game-winning touchdown) was way too much time to leave an opponent while clinging to a one-point lead. Organization and a calm mind are required to win close games. Chuck’s mind was cloudy, especially when explaining the timeout during his postgame press conference, “We wanted to get the guys in the huddle and get a play called. Yeah, we can look back and say it would’ve been nice to bleed a lot more time off the clock. Looking back on it, could we have burned more time off the clock? Yeah, but we had some personnel issues.
“We wanted to get a few other guys, a different personnel group in there, whatever it was and decided to call a timeout there and regroup and get back to the line of scrimmage. We felt like it was more important at that time to get back, get gathered, get a call in and get settled because we still needed the touchdown. We felt like they still had to go however far they had to go to get in field goal range and we can close it out.” Chuck could have bled clock AND still called the timeout.
This question does not belong on the list because this morning is the exact right time to ask it.
8 – What will be the Colts biggest need to fill with a top 10 pick in the 2017 draft? Derek Barnett of Tennessee is a game changing sack master and Marlon Humphrey of Alabama is a lock down corner. Either would be an upgrade over the status quo, but are we really ready to talk about the draft? And can any reasonable person assume yet that the Colts will fail their way to the upper third of the draft order? If Matt Prater misses the 41-yarder at the end of the game, we are talking about a momentum changing game upon which the Colts could build a successful season.
7 – Is the 2016 draft class a bust like the the 2013 group? This not only a premature question, it’s silly. Ryan Kelly was mostly good yesterday. T.J. Green did some nice work before spraining his knee. Hassan Ridgeway and Antonio Morrison made a couple of plays. UFA Josh Ferguson showed his ability to get yards after the catch. The Colts loss was not caused by anything the 2016 draft class did or did not do.
6 – Does yesterday’s bad start equal bad coaching? Because of similar circumstances throughout his run as the coach of the Colts, maybe it is time to question Pagano’s thought process early in games. Again and again, the Colts refuse to do what they do best early in games. I understand the desire to not overexpose that banged up defensive unit, but three and outs don’t help either. The Colts offense is built to gain yardage in chunks. Asking it to take smaller bites to help even the time of possession battle is evidence of overthinking.
5 – Is Andrew Luck finally fulfilling his promise? Great first game of the season for Luck. The bizarre departures from logic, occasional wayward throws, and desire to play physical football that have kept Luck from entering the elite level of quarterbacks occupied by Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees were missing yesterday. That doesn’t mean they are gone forever. Luck played a nearly perfect game, and the Colts still lost. Good news. Bad news.
4 – If Sio Moore is the best defensive player on the Colts, is this the NFL’s worst unit? That question presupposes a number of facts not yet in evidence. Moore tallied 13 tackles yesterday, but that doesn’t make him the Colts best defender. After a single game, assessing the Colts defense as awful is premature, but potentially accurate. There is no way to point to yesterday’s effort as reeking of high quality or limitless potential, but it’s one game of 16 for a unit that has injuries almost everywhere.
3 – If the Colts can’t win at home against the Lions after zero turnovers, special teams perfection, and Andrew Luck playing at the top of his game, when will they win? If everything you thought needed to go right to win went right, and you still lose, is that a positive? That’s a great question that is likely ringing in the heads of the Colts coaching staff. Test #2 is coming up in six days, and we’ll have a fuller set of answers after that.
2 – How do I get a rebate for the unused portion of my season tickets? Stop it! Stop the madness. Indy isn’t – or shouldn’t be – a bandwagon town. We’ve seen this before. Back in 2008, the Colts started 3-4 and won the last nine to post a 12-4 record. That season included an opening night 29-13 beatdown to a Chicago Bears team that finished the season 9-7.
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1 – Is Ryan Grigson the right guy to build a winner in Indy? Yesterday wasn’t the first day to ask that question, nor will it be the last, but waiting for the end of the season to conclude anything is both wise and humane. The defensive secondary is riddled with injuries, and there are 15 games left in the season. On the plus side for Grigson, the offensive line was pretty damn good yesterday – particularly in the second half.
Kent Sterling hosts the fastest growing sportstalk show in Indianapolis on CBS Sports 1430 every weekday from 3p-6p, and writes about Indiana sports at kentsterling.com.
Top six reasons why Paul Scruggs going to Prolific Prep is a fine idea
Former Southport HS guard Paul Scruggs working out at his new home – Prolific Prep in Napa, CA.
Southport High School’s Paul Scruggs is headed west – way west.
The very talented guard who is being recruited by Indiana, Xavier, UConn, and others has decided to play basketball at a basketball academy/prep school in Napa, California for his senior year.
This has basketball fans in a dither as they try to fathom why a kid would abandon his high school teammates, friends, coach, and school in favor of a year with a rogue outfit dedicated less to education than basketball.
My first question is – why should this surprise anyone? My second question is – why do you assume this is a bad call? My third question is – why do we concern ourselves with the prep school choice of a teenager doing nothing illegal, immoral, or unreasonable?
Those questions are a hell of a lot more sensible than the answers many might passionately use to argue that our culture is collapsing because a kid is choosing to hoop outside the state where we hold the game most precious.
Here are 10 reasons Paul Scruggs going to a prep school 2,250 miles away is a decision that shouldn’t bother us one little bit:
6 – There is educational value in travel. If Prolific Prep plays a schedule like Oak Hill, IMG, or Bishop Gorman, Scruggs is going to get to see a lot of the United States on the school’s dime. I agree entirely with the IHSAA’s limit on travel for athletic events, but there is a positive to playing a schedule that takes kids to a variety of cities as long as the school books a little education into the itinerary. Why not take a team to the Washington DC area and walk the kids through part of the Smithsonian or the National Holocaust Museum? How about a trip to Memphis for a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum? A stop at Ground Zero in New York was powerful for me – why not a high school basketball team.
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5 – Maybe the pressure of carrying a high school team weighs on Scruggs. When he had current Butler freshman Joey Brunk as a running mate, Scruggs could be Art Garfunkel to Brunk’s Paul Simon. As a senior at Southport, Scruggs would be counted on to be Kanye West every single night. Some people function best as a standalone act. Others prefer to be one of five pieces to a basketball puzzle. Maybe Scruggs is the latter.
4 – Scruggs gets to play basketball with friends from all over the country at Prolific Prep. IHSAA transfer rules prevent a kid from deciding to play basketball with friends, rather than a respect for continuity and geography. For example, if Scruggs wanted to leave Southport to go to North Central to play with Kris Wilkes or Hamilton Southeastern with Zach Gunn, he would be ineligible for one year. I understand the transfer rules as an incentive to deal positively with adversity and value education as the primary objective of a high school, but if a kid wants to elevate playing with friends to a higher level of priority than the IHSAA is comfortable with, going to prep school is the only option. At Prolific, Scruggs is going to be a teammate of longtime friend and teammate Gary Trent, Jr.
3 – What’s wrong with going to high school in Napa? Napa is beautiful and temperate – a lovely place with interesting people and a very nice lifestyle. Southport is nothing to sneeze at, but it is not Napa. If you got a job offer to work in Napa, and all your expenses were paid, would you take the gig? You bet your ass you would. If you were offered a one year leave to visit and enjoy Napa on the dime of your company, would you? Yup!
2 – If Scruggs wants to play in the NBA, a little extra focus on hoops might be a good thing. Balance is great for a healthy and happy life, but if a kid has a laser focus on becoming a professional athlete, maybe this is the best route. If it’s okay for a college kid to choose the University of Kentucky as a place to train for the NBA, what’s the matter with a kid one year younger bouncing out to Napa for a year of training and whatever level of study is required to gain collegiate eligibility?
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1 – It’s his life, and where he spends his senior year is up to him. Who in the hell are we to sit in judgment of what is right and what is wrong for a 17-year-old kid? Scruggs and his family made this call for a set of reasons we can only speculate about. Hoosiers have a quaint notion about how a kid who might be able to compete for a state championship, a spot on the Indiana All-Star team, and maybe even Mr. Basketball should think – how he should exalt in the sacred value of those honors and experiences. If he doesn’t see it that way, we somehow believe he is operating in opposition to his heritage as a native of Indiana.
(I feel compelled to add that I am an enormous fan of traditional high school basketball, and the way the IHSAA governs it. My son played varsity basketball at the same school for four years, and I wouldn’t change a moment of that experience for him or me. My thoughts on Paul Scruggs are driven by the harsh judgment of people in Indiana who put a kid on blast after his family made a decision based upon what they felt was best for Paul.)
Kent Sterling hosts the fastest growing sportstalk show in Indianapolis on CBS Sports 1430 every weekday from 3p-6p, and writes about Indiana sports at kentsterling.com.
Top 10 great things about the game of golf as the BMW Championship is held at Crooked Stick
Crooked Stick will be filled with golf fans this weekend. Hopefully, area courses will see the same surge.
Golf is in a bit of trouble. Membership levels have declined. Rounds are down at public courses. People are choosing to do something else with their time.
And it’s silly. Because golf is a great game.
The BMW Championship has come to Indianapolis bringing the 70 best golfers on the planet for a no-cut challenge that results in a top 30 that earns an invitation to the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta where one golfer will win $10 million.
None of us will ever play golf at the level of Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, or Dustin Johnson, but we can enjoy what many call “a good walk spoiled”.
I prefer to think of golf as “a dull hike enhanced”.
Here are the top 10 reasons why:
10 – Everyone leaves the course feeling good about one shot and bad about another. Even a terrible golfer is likely to hit one solid shot or drain a tough putt. Scratch golfers are certain to mishit a ball in a way that sends them to the driving range to bang another bucket of balls to correct the cause. Golf encourages us through occasional excellence and haunts us using bouts of incompetence. Golf reflects life in the way perfection is unattainable and grace is fleeting. Continue reading
Top Seven truths about Colin Kaepernick’s protest during the National Anthem
Colin Kaepernick kneels during the National Anthem prior to last night’s game.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt rather than stand during the National Anthem prior to the preseason game between his 49ers and San Diego Chargers last night.
So we are left again to discuss the intent and result of Kaepernick’s mode of protest.
There are those who feel Kaepernick is right to choose not to honor a song that celebrates slavery during its third verse. Others see it as a slap in the face of the military. Still more want to talk about Kaepernick’s motive rather than the form of his protest. Some are actually talking about racism.
Kaepernick is trying to mollify critics by pledging to donate $1-million to organizations dedicated to finding justice for black victims of violence and by kneeling rather than sitting – as though kneeling conveys as lesser level of disrespect to those who hear the National Anthem as a sacred pledge of love for their country.
Unfortunately, the problem of racism will not be cured as easily as Kaepernick or anyone else would like. Reductive reasoning, a thought process at which we as Americans are particularly adept, does not allow for a solution that can be enacted because a man kneels, sits, marches, votes, or writes.
The problem can only be solved through the type of empathy gained by engaging in extensive and intense conversation – the kind of talks that either wear us out or bore us. Listen to our presidential candidates talk about one another, and tell me we are ready to listen to a nuanced and reasonable discussion of a societal ill as complicated as race in America.
“Bigot!” she screams.
“Liar!” he growls.
Curtain.
Add the role of police in our society to the issue of racism, and all of a sudden the common area in our unique perspectives is limited to almost none.
Here are seven truths of the Kaepernick protest we need to embrace in order to move forward toward a solution he is trying to solve:
7 – DeMarcus Cousins’ event tomorrow should be getting more media play than Kaepernick’s protest. Cousins is roundly criticized for what many basketball fans see as a selfish and ill-tempered mindset as he plays for the Sacramento Kings. What he is doing tomorrow in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, is the kind of forward thinking and reasonable corrective event that might actually lead somewhere productive. Cousins is sponsoring “Break the Silence, Build the Trust,” a discussion between civic leaders and the Mobile police so both sides can understand the challenges of working in law enforcement and living as an African-American. Continue reading
Top 10 reasons to watch and answers to glean as Colts and Hoosiers play tonight
Antonio Morrison and Josh McNary will be worth watching tonight as the Colts take on the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Colts and Hoosiers play simultaneously tonight, so DVRs all over central Indiana will be busy – as will sports bars for fans and gamblers who can keep an eye on each game simultaneously.
Sane people know that betting on any preseason NFL game is a chump move, and that betting on the fourth preseason game is as clear an indication of gambling addiction as any, but even without dollars on the line, tonight’s action will be worth your attention because as hard as drama might be to find in Cincinnati and at Florida International, it will be there.
The Colts vs. Bengals game is little more than a job fair for end-of-the-roster talent that might be able to wrestle a job offer from an impressed NFL general manager. Sounds a lot like “American Idol”, doesn’t it? That show, when it was good, drew historic audiences. This game, like Idol, will be interesting, if you know where to look.
When Indiana plays Florida International, a tall stack of Hoosier chips will be in the middle of the table. With a Big Ten East schedule that includes Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State among others, the Hoosiers cannot afford a non-conference misstep if they are to earn a second consecutive bowl berth for the first time in a generation.
Here are the 10 storylines that will keep my attention riveted on two TVs tonight:
10 – Will any of the back-up offensive linemen earn money on Sundays? To you, they are #70, #77, and #79. To their families and friends, they are Kitt O’Brien, jeremy Vujnovich, and Mitchell Van Dyk – large men with a dream. They have quietly gone about their business through camp and the preseason as Colts offensive linemen. They play in the second half of preseason games, and it is widely assumed they will be told to bring their playbook to Chuck Pagano’s office this weekend as the Colts cut the roster to 53. Maybe they catch on as practice squad members. Maybe they play next for an arena league team. Maybe they are forced to abandon their dream and go to work for a living. Tonight will give each a chance to make their cases that they belong. Continue reading
Top nine (likely) fictional story lines that would validate optimism for 2016 Colts
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck celebrates earning his first trip to a Super Bowl!
August 30th is way too early to be relentlessly cynical about the 2016 Indianapolis Colts.
An NFL season is broken into quarters, and even a bad first quarter is too early to cast an entire season into the scrap heap.
There is no doubt these Colts are a bit different from most of those Colts teams who have posted only one losing season since 2001, but until the season starts and players hit to win rather than prepare we can’t know for certain what might happen.
Injuries have taken a toll and brought question to positions that were believed to be areas of strength – like cornerback where Vontae Davis is expected to miss at least the first two games of the regular season.
Nine hits to the once again healthy physique of quarterback Andrew Luck in the first half of the Saturday’s preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles cast doubt about his ability to survive that level of beating for an entire season.
Sure, there are reasons to feel a little foolish for believing the Colts will find a way to the Super Bowl – or even the playoffs – but finding a reason to have faith is what we do in August.
Here are to top nine potential, but very likely fictional, narratives that would validate genuine optimism for the 2016 Indianapolis Colts:
9 – Hysteria in coaches meeting causes schematic replate. During a postseason wrap-up with media, Chuck Pagano confirmed rumors that mayhem during an early September meeting led to a change in focus and scheme that propelled the Colts to an astonishing turnaround. During that meeting, new defensive coordinator Ted Monachino drew up the innovative “98” defense for the very first time. Experts claim the deployment of Robert Mathis in a position never before conceived will forever change football. Continue reading
