A Note on This Site Moving Forward
Many of you have noticed that the family of DBB has grown substantially in recent times. There are many reasons for this but primary among them is this: these guys are good. Andrew’s fiery columns change the tone around here. Wood’s data-driven analysis is not only unique to this blog but unique to the entirety of the Bears-writing landscape. And now Bill Zimmerman, a professional in the sports radio business, is going to provide expert podcasts.
But I’m not going anywhere, folks. Because when the fans of the Chicago Bears are gearing up for a huge division tilt late in the season, SOMEONE has to provide a silly limerick at the top of their game preview.
Tweet of the Week
A Message from Alex Trebek: pic.twitter.com/LbxcIyeTCF
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) March 6, 2019
Video of the Week
This might be my favorite Trebek sequence in the history of Jeopardy. And I’ve watched more hours of Jeopardy than any other TV program by a wide margin. (It’s football, so watch it.)
On the Late Dan Jenkins
My true sports passion is golf and Dan Jenkins was the greatest golf writer to ever live. Here is the opening of a brilliant piece by Tom Callahan on Jenkins:
When his grandmother found an old typewriter in the attic, only child Dan Jenkins of Texas became a writer.
Word for word, he typed the war dispatches and sports columns from the Fort Worth papers, pretending to be a newspaperman. But, eventually, he changed the words, giving them an edge, his own edge.
An aunt named Inez owned a drugstore, a repository of dreams. Luxuriating in the store’s delicious aromas, Dan set up camp at the out-of-town newspapers stack. For a while, his favorite lead was by Damon Runyon from an account of Chicago mobster Al Capone’s tax-evasion trial: “Al Capone was quietly dressed when he arrived at the courthouse this morning except for a hat of pearly white, emblematic, no doubt, of purity.”
Jenkins also admired James Thurber’s take on one of Ohio State’s athletic stars, Chic Harley: “If you never saw Harley run with a football, words cannot describe. It wasn’t like [Red] Grange or [Tom] Harmon or anybody else. It was kind of a cross between music and cannon fire, and it brought your heart up under your ears.”
And this is from Bryan Curtis at The Ringer:
Dan Jenkins died Thursday night at the age of 89. He wasn’t just a sportswriter. He was a sportswriterly state of being. When seated at a bar, Dan insisted on having three drinks in front of him: a scotch and water, a backup scotch and water, and a cup of coffee. He smoked in his author photos. A cigarette dangled from his fingers when he went on Johnny Carson to hawk one of his books.
Dan succeeded in making the sport of golf both interesting and weird. He helped turn college football into a national pastime. He pulverized athletes with a single line. “Greg Norman,” he once wrote, “always has looked like the guy you send out to kill James Bond, not Jack Nicklaus.” Dan Jenkins was the fucking man.
For me, the genius of Jenkins was his refusal to be soft-handed with golfers when the rest of the golf media basked in deference. He took shots. He was honest. He was real. He was great.
Odds & Ends
- The Bears signed a kicker named Blewitt and social media had fun with that. But once again, don’t spend two much time on these kicker bodies. The Bears don’t have their starting kicker on the roster at this point.
- Brad Childress is returning to the Bears. If this excites you I would say you are TOO into football.
- There is a belief growing in league circles that Adrian Amos will be joining Vic Fangio in Denver. Will he be receiving the rumored $10 million per year? Doubtful.
- NBC Sports Chicago on the likelihood of Tevin Coleman: “Spotrac estimates Coleman’s market value to be a four-year, $21.28 million contract ($5.3 million average annual value), which if that’s the case would be reasonable for the Bears. The problem is: That’s probably not going to be what Coleman, a Tinley Park native, commands. Something closer to Jerrick McKinnon’s four-year, $30 million deal ($7.5 million annually, with $18 million guaranteed) with the San Francisco 49ers may be what it’ll take to land the former Atlanta Falcons running back.”
- Will Brinson doesn’t link Le’Veon Bell to the Bears in this column – probably because they’ll never be able to afford him. But Bell’s best fit is easily in Chicago, where he’d turn an up-and-coming offense into an elite one with a simple signature.
