Nothing But Iron: Fourth and Longing by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. November 4, 2007 For weeks I seethed about the Big Ten Network and Charter Cable and Fox Sports. In my mind’s unoccupied moments I suffered from violent fantasies–usually in the form of some hybridization of scenes from the often-brutal HBO series Rome and modern day contract negotiations between media heavy hitters. Then, unexpectedly, as if I had just turned the final page of Deepack Chopra’s next book: The Zen of Watching Sports on Television, a sense of calm settled over me like late autumn’s first gentle snow fall. Suddenly I began to think like the rational human being that I am surely not: This is not such a big deal. It happened yesterday, while I watched the Badgers in a valiant effort against real-deal powerhouse Ohio State. As late as mid morning, I had not planned on watching the game at all, declining three different much-appreciated invitations to join dish-enabled friends in their homes. I would not watch partly out of protest and mostly out of night-job-induced sleep deprivation. I figured I could instead lounge on the couch listening to Matt Lepay’s eyes-open-optional broadcast on the radio. If you have not heard Lepay call a game, I don’t do so for the first time on the day you are shopping for HD TV. You rethink the purchase. Yeah, he’s that good. In the last pre-game hour Kelly suggested we make the five-minute drive to our tennis club, where we could eat lunch while watching a quarter or two on the projection television in the dining area. A bold cup of coffee and fleeting recollections of recent Badger victories in Columbus forced a mental 540, which, for those of you who failed geometry and dunk contests is the same result as a 180, except that I changed my mind more than once. So there it struck me: The BTN is not all bad, even if I don’t have it. Here’s why: 1) We were able to reach a BTN-ready venue in the time it takes to shave. I know this because I shaved on the way there. Hail to the inventor of the electric shaver. 2) When we reached the club we saw our friends (in order of appearance): Ben, Dave, Monique, Jacob, David, Jeanette, Kate, Greg, Delight, Lars, Scott, and Jody. Instead of chatting and cheering and laughing and joking and ultimately commiserating with other fun people, we could have been sitting at home like lethargic pupas wrapped in cocoons of antisocial silk. (Sorry, this sort of thing can happen without warning writers who majored in zoology.) 3) I got chicken quesadillas, potato skins and carrot cake. The carrot cake was a mistake because as soon as I ordered it, OSU began its fourth-quarter domination. Next time I double up on the quesadillas. 4) Because there was a crowd, there was crowd, which contributed to the thrill of the game. More importantly the caliber of profanity was mild, almost to the point of being family friendly. The upshot of profanity control is that my average blood pressure was probably 20-40 points lower than it might have been. 5) We supported the local economy by spending our satellite dish money on food and drinks, and it was far less expensive than driving to Ohio to sit amongst nasty fans in the upper balcony just under the jet stream. My friend Brent goes to every one of his team’s away games. He would laugh at those of us who whined about having to drive to a bar to watch our game. And while brushing subject of the economy, let’s talk a bit about free enterprise, which inevitably segues into politics as in "Hey, government, please stay the smell out of the BTN-Fox-Charter controversy." I go on record, as a tax-paying sportswriter, as saying, with all the emphatic wherewithal, not to mention run-on sentencing that I can muster, that legislators who spend their valuable time and effort legislating television are total, unequivocal, irrefutable, intractable lame-brained idiotic morons, who are not deserving of the authority that we voters mistakenly conferred upon them. Lawmakers may disagree with me about how to educate children, finance health care or inspect bridges and I may still respect them, but get involved in that which not only has zero bearing on quality of life, but is best managed by the free market, and they are nothing more than the caricature politician of countless editorial cartoon renderings. Imagine what people in other countries must think: "They have a law for what?" Said the Wisconsin way, there are bigger deer to hunt. But who, if not legislators, will fight for our God-given right to watch the Badgers play in sporting events? We ourselves will fight. Or not. But know that we have that choice. Not even big business is above the laws of supply and demand. It would not take a mass exodus to get Charter to budge. A simple trend would cause monster media executives to wither in fits of tremulousness. If we really care, we will take time out of our legitimately busy lives to do some serious shopping. I am not yet planning to switch, partly because it will be a hassle to unbundle Charter’s combined telephone, cable and internet services, find a suitable location for a dish, coordinate installation, set up new accounts and learn new gadgetry, but by week’s end I will have inquired, and I will report my findings to you in the next column. If the dish serves up a favorable menu at a competitive price, without a prohibitively high increase in phone and internet bills, I may make the jump. If so, I will invite you to my house to watch the games. Most likely, inertia will assert itself and I will remain a more-often-highly-social Charter customer, not out of loyalty, but out of sensibility. But enough media, commerce and government already. You probably came here to read about sports, and none of that is sports. Sports is catching and throwing and hitting and running and jumping. There was a lot of that Saturday, and I was as entertained and impressed by Wisconsin’s effort and execution through three quarters of the game as I was wowed by Ohio State’s assertion of its most-voted-upon authenticity in the final period of play. The latter came in the form of 28 points that were not only unanswered, but unquestioned. My assertion that OSU is worthy of the national accolades heaped upon them does not bode well for the Buckeyes, who, on the weakness of the poor prognosticatorial acuity that has defined this sportswriting season, may soon flounder and fall from the ranks of the unbeaten. Alternatively, the fall may be stayed until January, much to the delight of those who perennial proclaim the Big Ten to be a weak conference. On the other hand, the Buckeyes knock the 8 ball in the last called pocket, proving that I even lack the ability to accurately judge my own inability. If nothing else holds, it must be concluded that OSU was the better team in Saturday’s game. Tyler Donovan, despite being sacked nine times, not only got up each time, but played a superb game. That he avoided interception under such pressure is a testament to his skill and judgement. I have said it before, but it was evident again, the kid is as tough as a two-dollar steak. And what is not to like about Travis Beckum? I’ll tell you what. He’s playing too well, as in well enough to matriculate to the college of big bucks. I would wish him well in the NFL (especially if the Packers get him instead of the guy picked just ahead of him), but the selfish side of me wants him back in red for another season. The defense held on for as long as it could–a full quarter longer than I thought it would. Jason Chapman’s loss was huge. Special teams was true to the season’s form–remarkable and remarkably inept in the same game. Lastly, even in failure I would not have questioned the decision to run a well-communicated, well-executed punt fake in the fourth quarter. I would never have thought to make such a call, but I will always be faithful to the take-a-chance-to-win mentality. Some will argue that regardless of the defensive formation the fake should have never been considered in the first place with that field position, but given Wisconsin’s mounting injuries and a clear shift in momentum, attempting the inevitable desperation play when it would not be expected was not a horrible idea. Did the turnover on downs cost Wisconsin the game? The answer is not knowable. Luke Swan talked about opportunity in his pre-season speech at the Big Ten Conference football meeting. Saturday’s was an opportunity lost, but the good news is that a new opportunity awaits. Michigan by virtue of eight straight wins and a stunning come-from-behind victory against MSU is officially resurrected from the dead. Of those remaining this season, the opportunity to beat the Wolverines next week in the Camp is substantial. A last word about baseball: Great job on the efficiency of the World Series. Had there been a Game 5, the decision to watch that or the Packers on Monday Night Football would have tormented me. O.K. not really, but since I would have been watching TV anyway, I might have switched over to the Series during commercials, unless they were the funny ones. Congratulations to the Schulmans, the lone Red Sox fans (as far as I know) of the NBI readership. Good thing for them that their team had such success in baseball given that New England and Boston College are such slouches. I liken watching Favre in his element to riding a modern-day roller coaster with your hands up in the air. You think the ride may be over, but suddenly you drop and roll into and inverted double loop. Favre’s overtime-ending touchdown pass to Greg Jennings was definitely a ten on the Weeeeeee! scale, unless of course you are a Broncos fan like my son Connor. It has been said that loss builds character and I am thankful for my son’s opportunity to build his. Today is an important day because it marks our return to the Kohl Center for the first exhibition game of the basketball season. The Badgers play Edgewood College, a division III school just down the street from the Field House. The Badgers are unranked in preseason polls, which is fine with me since it just doesn’t matter. I am sure the experts cite the loss of Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor, also known as about 75 points of offense, or something like that. I would like to remind people of this little known fact of basketball: All five players may shoot, so the risk of Wisconsin losing every game 70-15 is very low. There is a chance, in the absence of the scorers who are no longer here, that someone else or more than one someone else will score. This might be one of those years where a different guy scores twenty every game, or maybe Marcus Landry will follow the footsteps of his older brother or someone else with follow in the footsteps of Marcus’s brother. I am not saying that the Badgers should be ranked, but you would be foolish to consider a Ryan-coached team with plenty of experienced players and a good crop of freshmen and sophomores to be out of the running. I heard a rumor that Michael Flowers is healed. I bookend this column with a rant that is admittedly well outside the realm of sports. I am quitting Grey’s Anatomy for its egregiously error-filled simulation of medical drama. You may ridicule me for watching the show in the first place, but that would only lead to me pointing out one of your character flaws, for example my brother Bruce’s watching of The Bachelor and American Idol, not that Bruce would ever ridicule me. It could be an ugly escalation leading to more sportswriting that has nothing to do with sports. Anyhow, Grey’s not only crossed the line of sensibility, but desecrated the ground (ever how you do that) upon which that line was drawn, last Thursday with its portrayal of a supposed awake coronary bypass surgery on a bird-loving patient with malignant hyperthermia (MH), also known in poorly researched scripts as an "allergy to anesthesia". Not in the history of ER, St. Elsewhere, Scrubs, M.A.S.H, General Hospital and Marcus Welby M.D. has there ever been a more irresponsible story line. For the good of medical humanity and to get it off my chest I hereby expose the flaws: 1) General anesthesia is almost never used for cardiac catheterization, therefore MH would not be diagnosed in that setting. 2) MH is not an allergy, but a rare, dangerous, but treatable increase in body metabolism caused by only two classes of anesthetic drugs. 3) There are many anesthetics and sedative drugs that can be used safely in an MH susceptible patient, so the dilemma of choosing a life crippled by cardiac disease or bypass surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or sedation is ludicrous. 4) Many doctors would consider the use of thoracic epidural anesthesia, though not completely contraindicated, to be risky, given that the use of very high doses of anticoagulant (blood thinning) medications used during the heart surgery. No doubt I lost some of the non-medical folk with the technical details, so here’s the bottom line: There is no such thing as an allergy to anesthesia and you need never fear the prospect of having to be awake for coronary bypass surgery. Now forward this to everyone in the whole country and my job will be done. ______________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column. The author wishes his readers either a happy set-your-clock-back-an-hour-for-no-reason day or a happy-keep-your-clock-the-same day. ©2007 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.