Super Sunday

Happy Super Bowl Sunday ;-)

My goal today is to watch not one second of pregame and to tune in as the teams are lining up for the kickoff.

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Victor Williams and his parents, courtesy Muskogee Phoenix

The Muskogee Phoenix has a "signing day" story with Oklahoma high school receiver Victor Williams that includes this:

Muskogee’s Victor Williams could have joined a former Rougher, Jeremy Burton, at Louisiana Monroe, and focused on football or taken a late grayshirt offer from Tulsa, a school closer to home which also has great academics. But the 5-10, 175-pounder’s priority was hard-core academics, as in the prestigious Ivy League, which is why he selected Dartmouth over Harvard after back-to-back visits to the northeast.

Nice quote from his dad, Victor Williams, Sr.:

“He’s really worked hard to earn it. From this day forward, it’s going to be about the choices and decisions he makes. I’ve done all I can for him as a parent, and now it’s up to him to step out there and make his own way.”

Find Williams' highlight video here.

Editor's Note: Apologies in advance if any future reference to Williams refers to him as Victory. Virtually ever time I write his name the "y" shows up. Could it be Freudian?

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Harvard's Matt Birk has been named NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year.

A lengthy Star Tribune column on Birk and his future was written before he won the award. It includes this:

Retirement beckons for Birk, 35, not because he can't perform well, but because he has become far too familiar with the consequences of participation.

"It gets a little harder every year to bounce back, and then, in the back of my mind, there's always the concern about what playing will do to me 10 or 15 years from now, how it will manifest itself," he said.

There's also a follow in the Star Tribune.

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The New York Times "public editor" takes the paper to task – sort of – for its story about Yale quarterback Patrick Witt and the Rhodes Scholarship. The headline:

The Quarterback’s Tangled Saga

To be honest, the column might as well be headlined:

The New York Times' Tangled Saga

Portal 31, the New Haven Register Yale football blog, has a timeline of the Witt-Rhodes mess. It's giving me a headache so I'm moving on.