— You must surely remember him – Tim Green?  Defensive end with the Atlanta Falcons.  A star. Then blossomed as an author, writing books absorbed with football mysteries, while practicing law. Then we sort of lost track of him until the other day, when he surfaced in an an unlikely capacity—especially for one of his multitude of talents.

Tim is  the new football coach at Skaneateles High School in New York. It’s pronounced “Skinny-atlas” and it’s a suburb of Syracuse. As a National Scholar-Athlete at Syracuse U. in 1985, you would presume that he is well-equipped for the job.

—Apparently high school football prospects have not been scared away from Florida by all the rumors of Urban Meyer’s brief “retirement,” then “back to the saddle”. An organization that trafficks as a specialist in the field of high school recruiting rates Florida’s recruitment class as best in the nation—for whatever that’s worth. (Check it out four years from now.)

—Apparently our nation’s news factories fall victim to atrocious habit. Always, when J.D. Salinger’s name was dropped, it was preceded by the seemingly required “reclusive.” Upon his recent death, however, it was clearly revealed that “reclusive” didn’t apply at all. He was described as a “friendly neighbor” around Cornish and Windsor, and in New Hampshire, was reportedly a frequent visitor to the library at nearby Dartmouth College, and a frequent diner at his town’s small cafes. And “reclusive” did not apply at all, just another another flaw in our lazy journalistic jargon.

—Well, I read that the National Football League Players Assn. is joining the U.S. Justice Dept. in its Awareness Program of Violence Against Women. It would occur to many off us to applaud the NFL guys, and remind them that violence begins at home.

—Oh, boy, the Super Bowl ticket market has boomed from bearish to bullish, I read. Can you believe that end zone seats are going for $1,250, and club level for $3,000! And it is said they are in “short supply.”

I have never seen the athletic contest I would pay $1,250 to see, much less $3,000. By the way, way back when, tickets to the first version of the Super Bowl went for $16—in Los Angeles.

—Bud Selig says the World Baseball Classic, which is a questionable classic, to say the least, is booming. To me, it’s a thorn in the side of spring training to the major leagues, and while it may be “classic” elsewhere, it falls far short of that in the USA. Thank heaven, the next one doesn’t come around until 2013.

—Selah.

**I notice that our country’s president went to a college basketball game the other day. This was, I’d suppose, another step in his procedure to establish himself as a one-time player of the game. Georgetown played Duke. Georgetown won. It hasn’t been a good season for Duke. Nor for their neighbor, North Carolina. The situation has thickened so in Chapel Hill that someone has suggested that Roy Williams put his arm back in a sling and contend that he has been on leave. That would protect  his coaching re cord, which is leaking badly. Editorially, his timing is bad as well – his first book just came off the presses. The title is “Hard Work,” and the work had turned out to be harder than he expected.

** I think it was Gary Player who said, “You get only one chance to make a first impression.” Now, that’s an observation difficult to take issue with.

**In case you are among our citizens who have wondered what a “senior writer” is, as against, say, just a “writer”—I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. There are few writers older than I am, but I’ve never been able to travel under title of “senior writer.”

**The Senior Bowl game this year should have been renamed the “Tim Tebow Bowl.” The poor guy was under microscopic inspection from the first day until the final point was scored. One so-called television observer came down hard on him. “Fourth best quarterback here,” he said. “Probably will not be drafted above the third round.”  Maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe I’m a poor judge of QBs. I was wrong on Joe Flacco. I thought he was over his head in the NFL, basing it mostly on the leap from Delaware to the NFL. I  thought Matthew Stafford was about the same grade as David Greene.
Wrong again.
But Tebow? They downgrade his delivery, his agility, and contend that he has dropped off considerably from Tebow, the Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t think there’s any way he’ll be hanging around until the third round. I think he can become an NFL quarterback. So there…..