Welcome to The Pavilion

The struggle of writing, the decline of Twitter, the Mets, Kyrie, college football, NASCAR... it's all here as we debut a weekly roundup of good stuff we like to wrap up the week

This is The Pavilion, a new feature here at Willets Pen that we’re gonna try out. The name is inspired by the World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which of course is where our namesake train station is, and the idea is that this be a showcase at the end of the week, giving you some good stuff to take into the weekend. Enjoy!

A great thing about writing is being alone. A terrible thing about writing is being lonely. It’s a great way to deal with the demons of your mind, and a great way to feed the demons of your mind. Instead of me rambling on, here’s this from Michele Catalano:

Call it imposter syndrome, call it just being a realist, but I feel like I’m engaging in stolen valor when I say I’m a writer. I exist on the periphery of the more accomplished; I follow so many real writers on twitter and I always feel like I’m on the edge of their group, sort of standing back in the playground looking at them all engaged in a game I want to take part in, but lacking the pedigree to do so. So I watch them all, everyone with “writer” in their bio, everyone with bylines at the big places, everyone with a regular writing gig, and I think, I am not one of them.

I know I’ve written this before, but I’ve had bylines at big places and a regular writing gig… and I never stopped feeling all these same things. My Twitter bio now is a takeoff on a Mitch Hedberg line: I used to write about sports. I still do, but I used to, too. Am I still a sportswriter, though? A writer? Part of me says, “well, people are reading this, so yes,” and another part of me says, “well, people are reading this, so who gives a shit?” And if you’re here, the answer is not you. I’m just going to have fun here, and whatever anyone wants to call it, fine. But, for the record, Michele is a hell of a writer, and that’s why she’s here.

It’s probably time to get off Twitter, or at least step back. Parker Molloy was on it last week, but I missed it then, which is never a good idea, because Parker is pretty much always a step ahead. 

Before you pack up all your Halloween decorations, Willets Pod co-host (we’ll be back after the World Series) and Pod At The Park 13 fellow sadpants Addy Baird has a fun oral history of the Home Depot 12-foot skeleton that’s become a bigger and bigger part of October. While we’re regrouping and preparing to return to WP, Linda Surovich and Allison McCague have a new episode of A Pod Of Their Own up.

I’m out of the business of proffering opinions on Kyrie Irving with any kind of depth. I spent way too much time on him at my last job, and as Bomani Jones says regularly, he’s an unserious person. But what Bomani said on Wednesday’s The Right Time about Irving’s brand of anti-semitism (about 34 minutes in) struck me as very interesting. I’m not nearly as shocked by what Irving is spouting because, yeah, it’s the same stuff that the person in the funny clothes outside the subway station shouts.

And it’s true. Last week, I was in Jamaica (Queens) and outside the train entrance, there was a dude with a microphone, a little collapsible tent, and a bunch of speakers, just screaming about how the Pope endorses child rape. Wild, completely out of pocket stuff. Nobody on Sutphin Blvd. so much as broke stride walking by. Anyway, that statement the other day was garbage and it’s incredible that nobody could get the words “I’m sorry” into the statement. Steve Nash is lucky to be out of there.

The brilliantly demented geniuses at the Sickos Committee released their November poll. It will surprise no listeners of Not A Football Podcast that Iowa remains No. 1, to the point that writing it here isn’t even a spoiler. Off their well-deserved Athletic profile, it really should be said that the love of this shows through, and certainly Willets Pen has more than a little bit of Sickos in it. How could we not, with a philosophy that there’s a little bit of Mets in everything?

Speaking of college football, I’ve got some thoughts…

An NFL truism is that it’s a quarterbacks’ league. The AFC title game for the last 11 years has featured either Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes – their meeting in January 2019 in Kansas City is as much of a passing of the torch as you’ll ever see, even if New England won.

But football is not a quarterbacks’ sport. The QB is important, obviously – they’re touching the ball on pretty much every play, barring the occasional direct snap or wildcat play. Still, it’s not all about the quarterback, and not just when a team like 2021 Georgia has five NFL first-round picks on defense.

Mac Jones was a good college quarterback, a first-round pick, but it was Najee Harris and DeVonta Smith who were Alabama’s stars two years ago.

Going back further through the years, absolutely, there’s a rich run of signal callers – Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa on the same team (with Jones also in the QB room)... okay, this isn’t really making my point.

But it wasn’t that long ago that national championship-winning quarterbacks included Jake Coker, Cardale Jones, A.J. McCarron (twice), Greg McElroy, Matt Flynn, Chris Leak. The big-time talents – Cam Newton, Jameis Winston, Tim Tebow (whatever, he was transcendent in college) – were more anomalous.

Has the game at the college level, in tracking more toward pro concepts, become more reliant on quarterbacks? It seems so, and it would make sense. The late 2000s and early 2010s were dominated by defense, and getting past that required creativity on offense and quarterback talent to execute ever pass-happier schemes. Looking at this week’s CFP rankings only further emphasizes the point.

Hendon Hooker, the quarterback for No. 1 Tennessee, transferred from Virginia Tech. This is his fifth college season. Bo Nix, at No. 8 Oregon, came from Ole Miss, which is currently sitting at No. 11 with Jaxson Dart at QB. Dart transferred from USC, where Oklahoma transfer Caleb Williams has led the Trojans to No. 9. Also in the top 10 is LSU, with Arizona State transfer Jayden Daniels leading the offense.

That’s five of the top 11 teams in the country with transfer quarterbacks. Elsewhere, there’s James Madison, Oklahoma, Washington, and Appalachian State, a combined 21-10 on the year with quarterbacks Todd Centeio (late of Temple and Colorado State), Dillon Gabriel (Central Florida), Michael Penix Jr. (Indiana), and Chase Brice (threw five TDs as a freshman for 2018 champ Clemson, and also Duke’s starter in 2020), respectively.

And, of course, Burrow was a transfer from Ohio State, and Hurts’ year at Oklahoma after leaving Alabama helped him become what he is now with the Eagles.

There are two parallel tracks going which complement each other. A quarterback who transfers gains experience with a second (or third) collegiate playbook. They get looks at different defenses in practice. They’re better versed in football, overall, and that’s invaluable professional development – including getting quarterbacks into the NFL with less on-the-job training needed.

For the college teams, it’s not just a matter of getting a more seasoned player, but leadership and experience that help the entire program. The funny thing to me is, I saw it firsthand when I was in college, and Northwestern transfer Gavin Hoffman rewrote the Penn record books, but I didn’t really think much about the bigger context of not only Hoffman having gone from FBS to FCS (then I-A to I-AA), but of transferring in general, and all that goes with it.

Coaches might hate the transfer portal. Fans might find it annoying. But even with the grumbling, it’s removed the stigma that was attached to transfers a generation ago. Whatever interesting direction that takes the game – and it already has, really, Tennessee is No. 1 – the overall change is for the better.

It happened last weekend, but the magic of Ross Chastain’s last lap at Martinsville isn’t just taking two seconds off the lap record and destroying his car to surge into NASCAR’s championship race on Sunday in Phoenix. It’s that for this absolutely legendary move, we’re lucky enough to live in 2022, and for NASCAR to have everyone – everyone – wired for sound. To be right there in the action, and get the instant reactions of every driver, crew chief, and spotter, dazzled by this theoretical thing going from simulation to reality… every sport needs to get more microphones out there.

For a little more detail, Joey Logano breaking it all down is simultaneously intensive and understandable for a layperson.

Stay tuned this weekend to see if Chastain, Logano, or anyone else dips further into NASCAR’s bag of tricks and uses a red tortoise shell at Phoenix.

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