What we too often expect from people we wouldn’t — couldn’t — expect from ourselves.
Take the running back on a sweep toward either sideline (now called “the edges”) late in a game, his team winning and eager to keep the clock moving. A force of defenders forces him out of bounds, stopping the clock.
Almost invariably, the TV and radio commentators then scold him for “not staying inbounds.”
Really? He should’ve just ceased running to suddenly and limply fall to the ground as two or three big guys pushed him toward the sideline? Without losing the ball, that’s impossible — and a ridiculous expectation.
In 2004, Tommy Tuberville was the hottest of coaching commodities as his Auburn team finished 13-0. He had been recruited to Auburn after coaching Ole Miss back to a winning team — and after Tuberville vowed he only would leave Ole Miss when “they carry me out of here in a pine box.”
But you know how it goes with student-athletics. He arrived at Auburn in a cash box. Then, in 2008, when Auburn finished 5-7, Tuberville was forced to hit the coaching road, to Texas Tech, and now Cincinnati, another school that can’t spend enough or compromise the college enough to win football and basketball games.
On Nov. 5, after Cincy fell to 4-5 with a home loss to BYU, Tuberville was headed off when a nearby spectator hollered, “Hey, Tommy, you’re stealing! You’re stealing from this university! You’re stealing, Tommy!”
Rough stuff, especially just after a loss. Don’t know if most of us could be expected to quietly suffer such a sudden and harsh up-close and highly personal accusation or evaluation.
Not that he said anything nearly as harsh in return, but Tuberville couldn’t — he couldn’t stay in bounds when he was being shoved out of bounds.
“Go to hell!” he hollered back. “Get a job! Get a job!”
The next day, perhaps at the school’s urging, Tuberville, 62, apologized in a written statement: “I had a regrettable outburst at a moment of great frustration. I apologize for that and will fix it.”
And so Tubervile wasn’t allowed the dignity to holler back at a guy who called him a thief, not without unilaterally apologizing, anyway.
Cincinnati pays Tuberville a base salary of $2.2 million per season, for five years. At that number, perhaps he is expected to surrender his dignity and sacrifice reasonable standards of the human condition.
How many of us could apologize for hollering back at guy who kept hollering that we were crooks? But most of us never have been in a position to worry about whether they’re looking for a reason to fire us from our $2.2 million per year job.
That is why I always will have a soft spot for Jets quarterback Geno Smith. When his jaw was broken by a punch from teammate IK Enemkpali, Smith didn’t claim innocence nor did he refute claims that he may have, to a certain, nose-to-nose human-conditions extent, been asking for it — like the fellow hollering at Tuberville.
Speaking of Jets QBs and swollen expectations, in Ryan Fitzpatrick, we have one who last season overachieved to the point that we — especially the media — expected overachievement to be his new normal.
Fitzpatrick is a plays-tough, tries-hard QB who does his best to do his best. He helped win games at Harvard — beating teams such as Lafayette Holy Cross and Columbia; not Miami, Ohio State and Alabama. And why would we expect sustained superior NFL play from a QB playing with his sixth NFL team?
If five previous teams deemed him expendable, what could we reasonably expect? He would overachieve again because the Jets, stuck for a QB, paid him a lot of money? That is not how it works.
Would any of us run faster or jump higher if we got a raise? Doing the best one can is what makes watching Yoenis Cespedes play — and listening to those who often ignore or excuse his minimal effort and demand his return, at any cost, to the Mets — so insufferable. Why did such a talent become expendable to three teams in three straight years?
That is why Red Sox fans still reference a fellow as “Bucky [Bleepin’] Dent.” He exceeded their expectations — by several left-field feet. And realistic expectations are why the Yankees, the next game, didn’t bat Dent cleanup.
Don’t hold your breath for ESPN ‘insiders’ to explain
On Nov. 21, the University of Oregon is scheduled to play in a basketball tournament in Hawaii — along with Georgetown, Tennessee and Wisconsin — on ESPN. Given that ESPN is loaded with college basketball experts, surely one of them will explain the academic and athletic presence of Oregon/“University of Nike” guard Dylan Ennis.
Ennis — who is from Ontario, Canada, where he still lives — turns 25 next month. He previously played college ball for Villanova, and before that, Rice. He soon will be 25, and he has played for colleges in Texas, Pennsylvania and Oregon.
But first Ennis played high school ball at a private school near Chicago and another private school in The Bronx. East Coast, West Coast, north and south. He’s been everywhere, man, he’s been everywhere.
Despite the suspicious stench from all this, I’m sure ESPN’s college “insiders” — Jay Bilas, for example — will be able to sort it all out and make complete, honest sense of it, while assuring viewers that either way, ESPN money is not party to any of it.
Third down and out: Statistics that tell us nothing
Knowing what TV will hit us with as significant Sunday, it is worth noting three of the NFL’s top five teams in third-down efficiency — all third downs are recorded as the same — have a combined record of 12-13. The conversion leaders, at 53 percent, are the 4-4 Saints.
Two of the three worst have a combined record of 9-8. And Cleveland, 0-10, has a better third-down efficiency rate than 10 teams — including the 6-2 Chiefs, 6-3 Broncos, 5-2-1 Seahawks, 5-3 Giants and 5-4 Ravens.
Did Carl Pelleck have any influence on me and, by extension, this column? I hope so.
I was lucky to have been an 88-bucks-a-week copy boy, awestruck when Pelleck, a former copy boy, would enter The Post’s grimy South Street city room 40-plus years ago.
A crime reporter who either broke stories or chased them until he got in front of them, Pelleck was a living black-and-white movie standard, the inscrutable big city newspaperman: tough, gruff, curt, scowling, fearless, frill-less, cynical, nail-ya-to-your-chair sarcastic — except for those disarming, magical moments when he was none of that.
Pelleck died Wednesday, at 84. He was something else.
