Sport changes with training, coaches, athletes, and their intersection with technology. Some reminisce about better days and "Old School."
Art informs old school failure. Dehydration spawns muscle cramps, low blood pressure, fatigue, impaired concentration, and elevated body temperature via reduced sweating. Old school underachieved or worse. Gatorade arrived in 1965 but took years to achieve widespread distribution. T.C. Williams won in 1971 with "water makes you weak" whatever.
I remember walking home from late summer scorching soccer practices with leg cramps severe enough to cry waterless tears.
Do we celebrate old school "run until you drop" or until you puke? Or is old school metaphorical for another time where history empowered coaches? At times, it was an era for unfettered dictators to players and parents.
Do we favor old school training methods, cinder running tracks, 16 mm film and reel to reel grainy black-and-white movies processed by labs ninety minutes away? Or mimeographed playbooks instead of PDF files on tablets, cellphones, or laptops?
Or maybe we prefer vintage basketball scoreboards. Or believe that Chuck Taylors outperformed Nikes?
The Information Age hadn't arrived. We had no Internet video or easy access to information from coaches and teams around the globe.
African-American players were forced into separate eating places and lodging. Racial epithets flowed freely and "Only the Puck Was Black." Unacknowledged quotas limited the number of African-American players on the court at one time.
Not everyone could hear the wisdom of Newell, Wooden, or Auerbach. Old school pearls lacked affordability, reliability, and indexing.
There's nothing wrong with nostalgia. But pining for overt racism, inferior facilities, equipment, training methods, medical treatment, information, and data management is a fool's errand.
Lagniappe: Nobody apologizes for his criminal acts or hometown gyms.
Lagniappe 2: A reminder from Ken Burns (MasterClass) about documentary filmmaking.
"Nobody...does it alone." - Ken Burns, MasterClass
