Digital Ink Los Angeles

Thanks to and credit to Sport Illustrated’s photographer, Heinz Kluetmeier, for this 1979 photo insert from 30 years ago.

They called him the Tyler Rose. His leg strength — the weight and fury of those tree trunks churning, jersey #20 at Texas and #34 with the Oilers — Earl Campbell was a perfect blend of balance, strength and speed.

His career with the NCAA’s Texas Longhorns and NFL’s Houston Oilers is a thing of legend — a powerful display of leg strength and nimble feet that make Big Earl the most feared Running Back in history.

Earl was born in 1955 in Tyler, Texas, the sixth of eleven children. When Earl was 11 years old, his father died. Some people say this made Big Earl become a man at a young age.

Well, after leading his Tyler High team to a Texas State Championship, Barry Switzer said he should have gone straight to the pros. In his senior season at Texas in 1977, Earl was awarded the Heisman Trophy, having led the nation in rushing with 1,744 yards. Earl’s best NFL season was 1980. In 15 games with the Houston Oilers he had 373 carries for 1,934 yards, at an average of 5.2 yards per carry with 13 touchdowns.

Watch this YouTube video showing the Power and Force of Earl Campbell with a football in his hands.

For this kind of spirit and human strength, a hero, if not superhero, mythic status, must be offered the Tyler Rose. #34 in the program, #1 in our football hearts.

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Administrator 1%, 70s, 80s, Athletes as Artists, Heroes, The Good Life athlete, athletics, feet, football, force, GOOD, hero, Heroes, heroic, legend, Longhorns, NCAA, NFL, Oilers, power, strength, superGOOD, superhero, Texas

September 21, 1970 was the first episode — 39 years ago tonight. Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell, and Don Meredith were the originals, with Frank Gifford replacing Jackson in 1971.

Take a look at this classic original footage of the 1978 Monday Night Football “Pro Bowl” episode.

Or the groovy headphone check from a 1973 MNF introduction to the game. Here as the YouTube video:

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“In our blessed and mostly peaceful society we’re not as familiar with courage as we once were. We ascribe the virtue to all manner of endeavors that only really require skill, fortitude and a little daring, the qualities Pat Tillman showed on the football field. Pat’s best service to his country was to remind us all what courage really looks like, and that the purpose of all good courage is love.“
– Senator John McCain
Pat Tillman’s memorial service, May 3, 2004

Pat Tillman was an excellent football player. He was also an heroic soldier. He gave his life for a cause most Americans still can’t quite comprehend, except to say there are bad people who wish our nation harm, and men and women like Pat Tillman have a desire to defend everything this nation represents.

Every once in a while, an “Outlier,” a 1%er, a SuperGOOD person comes along, and their exceptional character necessitates their destiny. For Tillman, it was a sad ending to an otherwise extraordinary life. Only now, after years of cover-ups and back-room bureaucracy, have the facts surfaced about his death. Like much of war, they are not pretty.

Pat Tillman, Sr., in a letter written in 2005 to The Washington Post, stated that supposed “mistakes” by Army higher-ups were part of a pattern of conscious misconduct:

“With respect to the Army’s reference to ‘mistakes in reporting the circumstances of [my son's] death’: those ‘mistakes’ were deliberate, calculated, ordered (repeatedly), and disgraceful — conduct well beneath the standard to which every soldier in the field is held.“

Writer and “New-New Journalist” Jon Krakauer has a new book, “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman,” which attempts to expose the facts behind the Pat Tillman tragedy.

Whatever the truth may be, Pat Tillman will always be a hero. On the 8th Anniversary of 9/11, Digital Ink Los Angeles remembers the people who’ve sacrificed everything for the love, not the glory.

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Burl Toler was the first black official in professional football, and any professional sport for that matter. His story is one of courage and profound passion for the competition and camaraderie of the game of football. But the real story begins with the college football team and the players he played and competed with.

The University of San Francisco Dons football team was undefeated in 1951, going 9-0. The following is an explanation for the dilemma faced by the team, when they had to decide whether they would go to a bowl game without their two best players — All-American Ollie Matson and Burl Toler, who were both black.

The following is taken from the USF sports information website:

“The announced reason for rejecting USF was its weak schedule, but San Francisco sportscaster Ira Blue reported that he was told by Gator Bowl president Sam Wolfson that the Gator, Sugar, and Orange Bowl committees had all decided to avoid teams with ‘Negro’ players.”

“There was also an insinuation that had the Dons been willing to play without Matson and Toler, they might have been granted a bid. Without hesitation, the players decided they would never play in a bowl game or otherwise without Matson and Toler.”

“The school needed the financial reward a trip to a bowl game would reap, in order for the football program to be sustained. The sport was costing the University nearly $70,000 a year, a deficit the school couldn’t endure any longer.”

“On December 30, 1951, the Reverend William J. Dunne, S.J., then USF’s president, announced that the school would no longer field a football team because of the financial burden. The school’s best football team was to be its last Division I team.”

Pete Rozelle — who would lead the NFL as its commissioner for three decades — was the team’s sports information director, and he proclaimed their accomplishments as his proudest moment in football.

Three players from that team went on to gain NFL Hall of Fame honors, and Burl Toler was elected to the Hall of Fame as an official with more than 25 years of dedication to the game.

In remembrance to Burl Toler, who died August 16, 2009, check out the YouTube video of the Fox Sports special during the Fiesta Bowl about the magical season of the 1951 University of San Francisco Dons, and their willingness to go beyond the game and embrace their “Negro” teammates.

Special people do special things.

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“All that I care to know is that a man is a human being–that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
~~ Mark Twain, in Harper’s Magazine, September 1899

Mark Twain is a man of American letters who spoke to the profound paradox of man — at once a brave beast, divine and brutal, with ugly virtue and graceful depravity.

There’s a video circulating the internet with naked images of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, taken surreptitiously by a voyeuristic video-maker with access to Erin Andrews’ hotel-room peep-hole.

All dorm-room humor aside, and after the initial lure to search “Erin Andrews Naked Video” for the best-quality posting on the internet, there arises a moment of pause…

What kind of sick freak has the audacity to put his video camera to a door’s peep-hole and video a young woman in the privacy of her hotel? Not casting any stones, just wondering what this person does for fun? Is there an extreme likelihood that this voyeuristic freak wouldn’t know what to do with Erin Andrews if she invitingly opened her door and offered her uninvited guest to come in for a nitecap?

Quite simply, Erin Andrews is a beautiful woman living in an ugly world. She deserves better. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and Colin Farrell somehow found their sex videos on the internet because they had intentions from the beginning to capture these compromising images.

Maybe Erin Andrews can call up some of her NFL buddies with gangster friends and criminal histories — Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Ray Lewis, Travis Henry, and Steve Smith — to exact some violent justice on this peep-hole pervert? That would be a nice professional courtesy, considering the way Erin Andrews has always been an absolutely professional and courteous reporter since she began with ESPN in 2004.

Administrator 21st Century Culture, Art and Justice, New Media, Social Responsibility, Web 3.0 athletes, circumspect, class, courteous, Erin Andrews, ESPN, images, internet, justice, Mark Twain, media, NFL, nude, professional, social, sports, video, voyeur

Ernie Barnes was an artist and a football player. His “Sugar Shack” painting to the left is famous from the TV show “Good Times” and as the album art for Marvin Gaye’s I Want You.

Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938, to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a home helper to a wealthy lawyer’s family.

Ernie got through college on a football scholarship to the all-black North Carolina Central University, majoring in art.

According to the Ernie Barnes.com website, “The Company of Art“:

He was drafted by the then-World Champion Baltimore Colts football team. He then spent the next five seasons as an offensive lineman for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos. In 1965, New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin recognized Barnes’ artistic potential and replaced his football salary for one season so he could devote himself “to just paint.”

One year later, Barnes made his debut in a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at Grand Central Art Galleries in Manhattan and retired from football. His autobiography “From Pads to Palette” chronicles his transition from athlete to artist.

Ernie Barnes’ first professional exhibition was a sell-out, beginning an ongoing, long relationship with the Grand Central Art Galleries, as well as the McKenzie and Heritage Galleries in Los Angeles.

Ernie Barnes: Born July 15, 1938 – Died April 27, 2009

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