From the notebook of a sportswriter who is encouraged by an energy-soaked first week of practices in shorts:
• Yes, they’re only playing a little flag ball, but flag ball is on the rise everywhere. Maybe we can throw some playoffs into the mix, hold a Spring Bowl for the league over July 4 weekend.• I’m just tamping down my excitement for watching spring ball by making jokes, because taking this stuff too seriously is a joke. But man, the energy level on this team is high. I don’t know if• And the new players. I know he’s only a rookie but Mason McCormick brought to mind the days when Aaron Smith and James Farrior would race each other to the other side of the field on “riversides.”• Am I showing my age by using that Bill Cowher term? Riverside means the players must flip the practice field.• Russell “Call Me Russ” Wilson is showing that same kind of energy. And the physical new strong safety, DeShon Elliott, when asked what he’s noticed most about this team’s culture, immediately replied, “Urgency. Urgency to win.”• That’s become apparent just from the first week in shorts.• I can hear the head ball coach laughing at me now, but it is what it is.• Yeah, a little coach-speak back at him.• Funny how the out-of-town aggregators (a term we in the business use for those who re-write the work of those of us in the business) who blew mild comments up into “Divided Locker Room!” are now re-writing about how that stuff was taken out of context. (When those of us who can read words knew so at the time.)• Writing two stories out of nothing has become a money-making method, for sure.
