“They say” the answers to all of Life’s questions can be found within either The Godfather, CaddyShack or Animal House. I include Lonesome Dove on that list. Larry McMurtry’s opus/epic “oater” of a 1870s cattle drive and the adventures of Texas Rangers Gus and Woodrow manages to capsule Life as well as can be done within one book / TV movie. Ergo, why it is “an epic opus”.
Amid a cast of characters more colorful than a PMS wheel is a half-breed mega-bad guy by the name of Blue Duck. As pure-tee eeeevil-to-the-bone as Blue Duck is, I give him more integrity points than many/most Big Time College Coaches….. and here’s why…..
If you have seen Lonesome Dove (I have AT LEAST a dozen times) you likely have two vivid memories. (1) when Danny Glover (“Deets”) gets stabbed with a spear by the little Indian boy; and (2) when Blue Duck captures Lorie Darlin’. A #3 might be The Hangin’ of Jake Spoon…. or Gus’ deathbed scene.
Blue Duck is played by veteran character actor Frederic Forrest. IMO, the character of Blue Duck may be THE most down-right shiver-down-your-spine scary villain in all of movie-dom. Hannibal Lechter AND The Nazi “Jew-hunter” in Inglorious Basterds would both be very afraid of Blue Duck.
If The Old West has been overly-romanticized as a period where men were men (Matt Dillon et al) and justice dispensed to them what needed it by a shootin’ iron or at the end of a rope, it is oft-overlooked that pure evil men such as Blue Duck roamed the Plains without a single ounce of compassion for any living creature.
OK BobLee, blah blah yadda yadda…. when you gonna get to the Boeheim part?
Hold your horses (a little Western lingo!) I’m setting the mood.
After twenty years of terrorizing the Territory, Blue Duck is finally captured. Woodrow is taking Gus’ body back to Lonesome Dove but happens thru the town where Blue Duck is about to have his “necktie party”. After chasing him off / on for 20 years, Woodrow had never seen Blue Duck face to face. The two face-off on the second floor of the jail.
Sneering as only Blue Duck could sneer, the epitome of pure evil tells Woodrow:
Blue Duck: [laughing] I raped women, stole children, and burned houses, & shot men, run off horses, & killed cattle, and robbed who I pleased, all over your territory, and you never even got a good look at me until today! I don’t reckon you would’ve killed me.
Blue Duck then throws himself out of the 2nd floor window, breaking his neck and denying the hangman’s his due. From Blue Duck’s perspective he “won”.
Unless you’ve been vacationing on Saturn the past four days you know that the NCAA dropped a sledge hammer on The ‘Cuse. Hell, even the Saturnians probably heard about it. The name “Boeheim” has been misspelled over 127 different ways in those four days by know-it-all board monkeys and wanna-be pundits.
To be fair, I betcha even “Dean Smith” was misspelled by that bunch. The level of their dysfunction cannot be exaggerated.
No one seems to know what all Boeheim and his henchmen actually did over the past decades but it involved the Y-M-C-A (congrats to 
Wuff-World and the Village People for that by the way) and it was so convolutedly sinister that “Jim Boe” is simply going with…..
“I didn’t do none of whatever they say I did, but even if I did do some/all of it I probably did some good stuff along the way too and I just want you to remember ‘the good stuff’ because, so would you if you were me…..” Yeah. Sure Jim.
That was a longer version of what Jim Boe said a few years ago about some little weasel, Bernie Fine, that was his #1 side-weasel for 30 years. The Jim Boe / Bernie Fine mess was a version of “Butch & Blake”. Sure we was best buddies for 20-30 years but its not like I had any idea he was a low-down egg-suckin’ dawg or anything.
If you were best friends with a low-down egg-suckin’ dawg for 20 years, do you think you would have a clue? I think I would but of course I don’t make mega-bucks as a living legend in college coaching.
Basically what “they (NCAA goons) say Jim Boe did” and/or was done by people under his direct supervision a/k/a “on his watch” was all the usual….. recruit thugs…. funnel $$$$ to those thugs…. keep those thugs eligible via all the usual ways thugs are kept eligible all across America’s college football and basketball.
That the NCAA goons investigated ‘Cuse for 5-6 years and then went back over ten years and dropped the sledge on “a Hall-of-Fame coach” had immediate Oh S**t reactions around a certain Old Well.
BubbaTheRealAD was quick to say “despite all the obvious similarities, there really aren’t any similarities at all because Syracuse doesn’t have Deborah, Burgess or Julius and our Hall-of-Fame coach is named Roy not Jim plus we paid for “a Weinstein Report”…..”
That so completely stunned TruBlue Nation that they gave a standing O to Coach K on Saturday night hoping the NCAA goons would consider that as a self-imposed penalty. Early indication is that the NCAA goons, while stunned by the unusual gesture, are NOT counting it.
What else is Bubba going to say? “Holy Crap…. if ‘the NCAA goons’ hit ‘Cuse that hard, they are probably gonna nuke the bejebbers outta us.”
Why is Blue Duck a better man than Jim Boe? Because Blue Duck admitted who he was and what he did.
The Jim Boes NEVER admit they do what everybody but their die-hards know they do. Their die-hards know, of course, that their hated rivals all “do it”. Find ONE TruBlue that thinks Jim Boe is innocent. $5 for the first TruBlue that thinks Jim Boe is innocent…. or that Coach K is innocent on the Sulaimon thing.
Not only Jim Boe but every “big time coach” that gets caught doing all the underhanded skuzzy BS that every big time coach does EXCEPT for Barry Switzer.
Bless his heart Barry Switzer said to the effect….. “We do what we do. We win National Championships. They catch us doing it and penalize us…. we “do time”. We get “out” we do it again and win more championships. They catch us again ….. our fans are OK with it. THAT is pretty much what Blue Duck would say if he was a Big Time Coach today.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, a Jim Boe, Bruce Pearl, Kelvin Sampson, Jim Calhoun, Larry Brown etc etc etc would ‘fess up that they are all running customized versions of the same Three-Card-Monte shell game….. with the SAME KIDS.
The coaches…. the ADs….. the dim-witted Academic Poobahs….. the Fat Cats….. NONE of “them” are in charge. The 17-18 year old semi-literate blue-chippers are “in charge” and have been “in charge” for years. And likely will remain “in charge”. They dictate the flim-flams, the dirty $$$$, the “eligibility scams”, the pardons on the sex crap….. all that yucky stuff.
Your school tries to get “uppity” and won’t play their game. OK, fine. Field a team of Beaver Cleaver Biscuit Boys and you won’t even make that NIT Losers Dance.
Maybe, just maybe Jim Boe or Roy or any of their ilk could choose to go out like Jake Spoon….
Gus: “You know how it works Jake, you ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw. I’m sorry, Jake, you crossed the line.”
Jake: “Well, hell, boys. I’d damn sight rather be hung by my friends than by a bunch ‘o damn strangers. Newt…. Well, adios, boys. Hope you won’t hold it against me. Never meant no harm. (spurs his horse, hanging himself before Gus does it)”
