We lost one of the all time great ones a week or so ago. Dan Jenkins, the Bard of Fort Worth, died March 7, having attained the age of 90 despite consuming a diet, that to hear his daughter Sally Jenkins tell it, consisted mostly of red meat, Winstons, coffee and scotch.
Jenkins was nothing if not prolific. Not only did he crank it out about football and golf, he wrote novels and screenplays. Indeed, in the wonderful tribute to him in the current issue of Golf Digest, it was revealed that he and friend and collaborator Bud Shrake got fired from screenwriting duties on the Eddie Murphy vehicle "Beverly Hills Cop II" because they were too funny. When Dan pointed out to the producer that he thought that was kind of the point of the enterprise he was told,"You don't have to be funny. Eddie be funny."
"For the next 20 years," the piece said. "The co-conspirators looked across the room at each other, pronounced "Eddie be funny" and howled."
Jenkins was at his best skewering pomposity, the PGA tour and Tiger Woods. Regarding the latter, Woods kept ducking him for interviews. Undaunted Jenkins wrote his own fake interview with Tiger. Check it out. It is beyond hilarious.
On the other hand, he could be borderline racist and sexist. I reviewed "The Franchise Babe" , a novel about the LPGA, for the local paper. I panned it. As I said at the time if you're gonna go blue you better be funny. And "Franchise Babe" wasn't funny.
But if he was losing his touch with the novel form, he regained it on Twitter of all places. His tweets as he followed the events unfolding during major golf tournaments were masterpieces of brevity and wit. Unlike the usual dispatches from the White House.
He died too soon. Can you imagine what Dan Jenkins would have made of the recent scandal involving those rich folks bribing their kids' way into certain elite institutions? And USC too? After all, this is just a sports story.
As I understand it, the parents hired an application facilitator to help guide the kids through the process. Which is completely legal. What wasn't legal is that this guy was the conduit through which applications with faked up athletic accomplishments were passed along leavened in most instances by bribes to college administrators.
I teach at a local two year school. We talked about this in class. Many of my students are of the non-traditional variety. Many of them hold down jobs. They don't play intercollegiate sports at our school. Every one of the ones in my classes got in on their own merit. At least I am relatively certain none of my kids could come up with bribe money even if they were so inclined.
The consensus? It ain't fair.
And that's right. It isn't fair. Especially when you consider that some of the ones that got admitted are airheads who couldn't pass the entrance exam during a fair fight and/or could give two hoots in Hell about an education.
This story has it all. Social media superstars, bribery, hubris, crooked athletic coaches and administrators.
Ah Dan you died too soon. You could have hit this one dead solid perfect.
As for me, I'm taking up Winstons and Scotch.
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