Tag: player

Posted on

Unfulfilled Promises

The latest entry in ESPN’s terrific ’30 for 30′ film series is “The Best That Never Was” about former University of Oklahoma running back Marcus Dupree. It chronicles his meteoric rise to becoming the most highly recruited high school player ever, immediate success as an unstoppable freshman for the Sooners, fall from grace, career-ending injury in the defunct USFL, and resurrection five years later for one final moment in the NFL. Watching it, I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for his plight. Marcus Dupree seems at peace – some 28 seasons removed from when he dominated the sports headlines.

What you may not know is there was a player who preceded him at OU by two decades who also was a surefire-can’t-miss-future-Hall of Famer: Joe Don Looney. Coincidentally, The Sporting News featured an article 15 years ago titled “The Greatest Player Who Never Was.”

After graduating from Ft. Worth Paschal High School in 1960, Joe Don opted not to play college football. However, after flunking out of the University of Texas and getting kicked out of TCU, he enrolled to play at a junior college in Oklahoma, where he led the team to the Juco national championship. The following year, playing for the Sooners, Joe Don Looney was a first team All-American. Unable to control his attitude, temper and nighttime sojourns, he left the team – just like Dupree – in the middle of his second season.

He then played for five NFL teams in five seasons… interrupted by a year serving in Vietnam. After retirement, Joe Don Looney exhibited behavior fitting of his last name: experimenting with cocaine, LSD and heroin; living on a boat in Hong Kong; taking care of a guru’s elephant in India for seven years; building and living in a solar-powered dome house in the far-off mountains of West Texas, 70 miles from the Mexico border. In 1988, at age 45, Joe Don Looney died in a motorcycle accident when he failed to hit the brakes on a curve.

On one of the walls of his home was a quote from Agnes Repplier: “It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” The magazine article noted he once said: “If the end zone is where happiness is, I’d be living there. It’s not, so I’m living here.”

There are lessons to be learned from Marcus Dupree and Joe Don Looney… not the least of which is potential only goes so far.

– – – – – –

NFL Careers:

Joe Don Looney – 724 yards rushing, 26 catches, 13 TDs

Marcus Dupree – 251 yards rushing, 6 catches, 1 TD

Share
Posted on

A Look Back In Time

One of the necessary skills for being a sports television producer is having the ability to back-time a broadcast off the air. That means if your designated off-time is 4:58:30 p.m. EDT and it’s 4:55:08, you have to quickly recognize you have 3:22 to conduct an interview with the player of the game or winning coach, get in the last two 60-second commercials, and have the announcers smoothly wrap up as you count down, “5-4-3-2-1-black.”

Having lived that life from 1981-’95, I find those particular talents come in quite handy in the business world. First, I’m seldom late for anything. In sports television, you’re judged on two things: how you got on and off the air, and what the other three hours looked like. It’s pretty much 50/50 on the grading scale, so you learn to be on time and on your game. Second, I break down big projects into small pieces and typically get them done as scheduled. That ability likely comes from knowing that in a football game you had four commercial breaks each quarter, so you learned to think and communicate in terms of ‘here’s what we’ll do during the next segment.’

You don’t have to have worked in television to become more efficient. The key to improvement is to adjust your approach to think in terms of the clock counting down. The moment you walk in the door you’re losing time. So plan your day accordingly… schedule specific tasks and commit to getting them done. Remember, you can never gain back a single minute, so treat each one preciously. You’ll become more adept at moving forward and within no time you’ll be judging yourself as an A+ in productivity.

Share