Professor

I will say that thier LB's look like a great crop along with a solid secondary. Combine that with a QB and weapon laden offense, you have the makeup of a solid young team as long as Levi does what he will be paid to do. One thing you have to factor in is the type of people these guys are. Character can be an important cog in the uninty of any team or line. for example, about Branch ,this was published only a couple of months ago and speaks volumes about what type of guy he is and there are certainly ??'s about other cardinals. There is so much that goes on outside of football that factors into gameday


Where is Gabe Watson's head?


I don’t know Gabe Watson, the U-M scholarship student-athlete and star lineman who signed a contract for over a million dollars with the Arizona Cardinals. Nonetheless, I would like to know where in the world his head is – and where his daddy’s head is. I hope someone will send Gabe this column so he can get in touch and tell us where his head is, because right now, it sure isn’t where it needs to be.

Baxter Jones, Gabe’s benefactor, is the unpaid director of a group on whose board I serve – TMAC (Team Michigan Athletic Clubs). He is also the unpaid youth coordinator of the Detroit Track Old-Timers (DTOT), a philanthropic organization I co-founded. Baxter mentored Gabe when he was a promising young player, as the upright U-M coach Lloyd Carr (my protégé) did later. Baxter co-signed a car note for Gabe in 2005 with the understanding that Gabe’s father would make the payments, which he did – for a while. Now Gabe is tooling around in a Hummer and neither he, nor his papa, is making the payments on the car Baxter signed for. This leaves Baxter – a teacher drawing a modest salary at Joy Middle School – holding the bag to the tune of $10,000. That’s chump change now to millionaire Gabe, but a big burden for Baxter. Channel 2 did a story on this, and Baxter came on my NewsTalk 1200 show (Sundays at 1:30 p.m.) and told the sordid story again to my listeners.

I, too, was a scholarship student-athlete – in the 1950s at Wayne State, where I was a world-ranked quarter-miler, outran the reigning Olympic champion, and became the first Michigan-bred sprinter to run 440 yards under 47 seconds. I won 174 career races and was undefeated representing the U.S. in Europe on the national team. But I would have achieved none of that without help from four long-dead coaches: Jimmy Russell of Northwestern, Ralph Green and Jack Rice of Denby, and the legendary WSU patriarch David L. Holmes. I was in constant trouble as a teen, but those men – particularly Green – never gave up on me.

Everything I am I owe to them and to my father John Telford – a Scotland-born ex-welterweight boxer and coal-miner. Had any of them co-signed for a car for me, I would have made the payments in blood if need be – or died trying. And I was no millionaire like Gabe Watson. Track in the 1950s was an amateur sport.

Baxter Jones’ father, Oscar, a DTOT member, mentored many young men. Both Joneses dug in their pockets deep and often to help them. Oscar was mentored in turn at old Miller High by two men who later became my coaching colleagues at Pershing – Roy Dues and the great Will Robinson. Dues and Robinson were exemplary male role models like Oscar and Baxter Jones, and like Russell, Green, and Rice – who sent several of us to college on scholarships like the one Gabe Watson was blessed to receive.

Charles Barkley, a multimillionaire and former NBA All-Star, says he refuses to be a role model for other people’s children, but he signed a lot of autographs for other people’s children. So did I – and so will Gabe Watson. With blue-chip athletes, it comes with the territory. Role-model Watson needs to get out his big fat checkbook pronto and write a $10,000 check to Baxter Jones to avoid further embarrassment to Baxter and Coach Carr – not to mention avoiding further embarrassment to me and to every other star who ever caught a football, dribbled a basketball, or broke a track record in this town. While he’s at it, he should add another $10,000 for TMAC and DTOT, because he must never, ever forget that Baxter Jones nurtured him when he was coming up.

Also, he must never forget that thousands of kids will model themselves after him. That’s where Gabe Watson’s head needs to be.

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