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Steve WatsonKNOW YOUR 1980s DENVER BRONCOS

This week, the third in a series of team-leading runners, #26, Bobby Humphrey.

Bobby HumphreyLooking to replace the retiring Tony Dorsett and the aging Sammy Winder, the Broncos selected Bobby in the 1989 Supplemental Draft.  He had two terrific seasons for the Broncos, gaining over 1100 yards both years, making one Pro Bowl, and helping the team reach a Super Bowl.  Denver seemed to have found the star runner they had long sought to complement John Elway, and the future looked bright.  Of course, Bobby knew how important he was to Coach Reeves and the team, so he sadly decided to leverage his value by holding out in an attempt to get a new contract.  Most holdout situations magically resolve around the time that either the brutal training camp schedule ends or the paying schedule of actual games begins.  But Bobby sat out for most of the 1991 season, waiting in vain for the team to accept his demands, while the Broncos stuck to their team policy of not negotiating with holdouts.  Realizing the Broncos were doing well even without him, Bobby relented and returned for the final few games of the season, but did not play a major role for the team.  He was traded to the Miami Dolphins before the following season, where he played only sparingly for a year.

He played in Super Bowl XXIV, in which the Broncos were pummeled by the San Francisco 49ers 55-10.  He did his part to earn those 10 points, though, leading the team in both rushing and receiving yards.

So what makes Bobby Humphrey so awesome?  Well, tough call.  His hair, for one thing.  He was also probably the most talented running back the Broncos had during the 1980s (if one considers only the worn-down Broncos version of Tony Dorsett).  But talent only goes so far.  By contrast, Sammy Winder contributed a great deal more to the team’s successes and should be more fondly remembered.  Bobby’s career derailed before he really had a chance to establish himself.  Bobby was a good player that could have had a major role on a powerful team for years.  Instead, his disastrous decision to hold out before he’d really earned his place  pretty much ruined his football career.  He never regained his stride or the respect of team management.  A 2006 Denver Post article called his decision “the most infamous holdout in Broncos history.”  I guess that’s an accomplishment.  Bobby seemed regretful of his actions in the article, noting that it was a decision he made in youth and inexperience that didn’t pan out well, and that he should have handled himself better during the negotiations.

Since leaving the NFL, Bobby has spent time as an Arena League coach and currently works for a concrete dealer in his home state of Alabama.  His son is a notable football prospect that will attend the University of Arkansas starting this fall.

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K and I were talking about a cooking conundrum.  We like cooking, and sometimes we produce something glorious, only it required six pans and three cutting boards and two hours.  On the other hand, some food is not transcendent but does have the advantage of being easy to obtain. Grilled cheese, for example, has a pretty definite ceiling on how good it can really be, but you also know going in that you’ll spend more time eating it than cooking it.  So it’s really not all about how good something is, it’s really all about the ratio between how good it is versus how much work is required.  If two meals are equally tasty, the lesser work option would definitely be the way to go.

[Worth elucidating: deliciousness is variable.  How much I want cake has a clear dependence on how recently I have eaten cake: if I’ve eaten it four days in a row, I wouldn’t go out of my way to get more. If I haven’t had it in three years (but could overcome my crippling depression about not having had cake for three years), I would probably be willing to burn an entire Saturday making it, if that’s what was required.]

Like all awesome things, this can be understood better with a graph.  Here is such a graph, with a few example plotted points:

Work vs. Joy for food

You’ll probably want to make anything that ends up in the white area because it has an acceptable Work::Joy, or Function-Over-Obtainable-Deliciousness, or FOOD, ratio.  You can see that there is a forbidden zone of food where the work required outweighs the deliciousness obtained. This is the area shaded red.

To understand this graph in more detail, let’s first consider the axes.

Work (vertical) axis: The higher up you get vertically, the more work involved.  So, something right at zero would be the easiest possible thing.  I’ll define that as “opening a bag of something.”  The food is already made and edible, you just have to negotiate the container.  (I guess if you want to get technical, ZERO work would not even be as much effort as opening a bag.  It would be someone bringing you the bag, opening it for you, then putting the food directly into your mouth.  But let’s set our baseline just a little above that.)  I suppose there is theoretically no upper limit, as you could always do more work on food.  Instead of baking bread with flour from a bag, I could grind the wheat myself.  I could further plant and harvest the wheat that I would grind.  I could further enroll in a genetic engineering program and create a new strain of wheat to plant, harvest, and grind, etc. But probably a multi-course meal planned and prepared in stages over the course of hours or days is more realistic.

Joy (horizontal) axis: Also knows as The Axis of Deliciousness.  Joy increases as you move rightwards.  Certainly there are foods that create negative Joy (e.g., mayonnaise) but there’s no reason to consider them here.  Something with minimal joy is something eaten merely as sustenance.  The classic example is a rice cake–which does have the benefit of zero work, at least.  The origin could therefore be called the Rice Cake Point.

Now let’s examine each labeled point.

A. This point represents food you would never bother with.  It’s a clear-cut forbidden zone case, requiring a lot of work with little joy, and the worst-possible FOOD.  For me, this is probably something like salmon.

B. Same amount of work as A but much more delicious.  Very highly delicious, in fact, but still so much work that it’s probably not worth all the trouble.  But it’s close to the line, so a debate.  Maybe some sort of lasagna.

C. Close to the line, so something you’d have to think about like B, but still falling into the forbidden zone.  Despite being a lot less work than B, there’s still low joy, and hence, an unacceptable FOOD.  Moderately difficult and moderately tasty, but just not quite worth it.  Notice that if it was either just a little less work or a little tastier it would be worthwhile.  I think most homemade soups end up in this area for me.  I mean, they’re pretty good, but nothing terribly exciting, and usually there’s just a bit too much prep for what I know is coming: you know, soup.

D. Similar to C in that this is something moderately tasty and moderately easy.  But, better FOOD than C, and hence, over the line and worth making.  Lots of things in this area.  Pancakes?  Understanding that pancakes are highly variable, of course.

E. Something quite easy, but with minimal joy.  Acceptable FOOD but probably only because it is easy.  Probably the realm of cereal.

F. Despite the maximization of deliciousness here, this will also take a lot of effort.  Food that reside in this area of the graph are special occasions.  Hence, I will designate this area the Thanksgiving Zone.

G. The most glorious area of the graph. Maximized deliciousness with minimal work.  Best possible FOOD.  I deem this the Barbecue Zone.

Work versus joy for food, with included Thanksgiving and Barbecue zones

Please use this graph to help understand your life (as it relates to food) better.

Your thoughts?

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Steve WatsonKNOW YOUR 1980s DENVER BRONCOS

This week, the second in a series of team rushing leaders, #33, Tony Dorsett.

Tony DorsettAs the 1980s Broncos evolved into a perennial contender under the coaching of Dan Reeves, it was clear that they would need a top-tier running back to enable Reeves to not change his lumbering offensive system in any way, despite the presence of John Elway.  Towards this end, for the 1988 season the Broncos traded for aging future Hall-of-Famer Tony Dorsett.  Tony had spent the first eleven years of his career with the Cowboys, amassing over 12,000 yards rushing, one of the best figures in NFL history.  He had finished among the league’s top ten rushers for eight consecutive years from 1977 through 1985.  But by 1988, Tony was coming off of a couple of uncharacteristically mediocre seasons, and the Cowboys were giving progressively more of the workload to Herschel Walker.  Taking advantage of a fresh start, Tony became Denver’s feature back for the 1988 season, and led the team in rushing, splitting carries with Sammy Winder, who otherwise served as fullback.  However, injuries and advancing age encouraged his retirement after just a single year in Denver.

Tony played in Super Bowl XII, following the 1977 season, in which the Broncos were pummeled by the Dallas Cowboys 27-10.  Fortunately for Tony, he played for the Cowboys at the time.  This pummeling would have prepared Tony for life as a 1980s Denver Bronco, but unfortunately his lone season with the team came in the year sandwiched between the team’s appearances in Super Bowls XXII and XXIV.  He also played in Super Bowl XIII, in which the Cowboys lost to the Steelers.

So what makes Tony Dorsett so awesome?  Well, the obvious reason is that he is without question one of the best running backs ever to play in the NFL.  He remains the league’s 7th all-time leading rusher.  He came into the pros as a much-hyped Heisman trophy winner and lived up to his promise.  A second reason is that his time with the Broncos makes more for an interesting story than a sports achievement: future Hall of Fame player sent packing by original team, who found a temporary place with the Broncos before retiring.  Denver has had few HOF members, and ever fewer who recognize the Broncos as their team. (Uh, Tony does not.)  But his year leading the team in rushing remains part of 1980s Denver Bronco lore.  But the real reason is that Tony successfully changed the pronunciation of his name in mid-career, a rare achievement.  Initially it was read like “DOR-sit”, but at some point he wanted it pronounced “dor-SETT”.  And everyone went along with it!  (Except his mom, per legend.)

These days Tony does charity work and makes occasional celebrity appearances.  Most notably, he hosts the Tony Dorsett Celebrity Golf Classic for McGuire Memorial, a ministry and charitable organization in western Pennsylvania.

Image from SI’s “Legends in the Wrong Uniform” Gallery.

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Steve WatsonKNOW YOUR 1980s DENVER BRONCOS

This week, #23, Sammy Winder.

Sammy Winder #23Sammy was not the flashiest of the Broncos’ running backs in the 1980s, but his steady work and dependable reputation makes him the quintessential example.  He joined the Broncos in 1982 after being drafted in the fifth round, and went on to play his entire career with Denver, retiring after the 1990 season. He led the Broncos in rushing for five straight years, from 1983-1987, and remains the team’s third all-time leader rusher.   Sammy’s best season came in 1984, when he rushed for 1153 yards and made his first Pro Bowl.  His 14 rushing and receiving touchdowns in 1986 resulted in his other Pro Bowl trip, as well as the team’s first Super Bowl berth of the 1980s.  Later in his career, he made a transition out of the starting running back role, splitting carries with other backs and even taking on the role of fullback.

He played in Super Bowl XXI, in which the Broncos were pummeled by the New York Giants 39-20, Super Bowl XXII, in which the Broncos were pummeled by the Washington Native Americans 42-10, and Super Bowl XXIV, in which the Broncos were pummeled by the San Francisco 49ers 55-10.

So what makes Sammy Winder so awesome? Most importantly, Sammy Winder has the best running back name in the history of sport (excepting possibly Craig “Ironhead” Heyward).  But beyond that, he was a steadfastly dependable cog in the team machine.  He wasn’t the fastest or strongest running back around.  Even at his peak he never finished among the league’s top ten rushers.  (A 1999 “catching up” profile of him in Sports Illustrated starts: “When Denverites hear the name of Sammy Winder, a former star running back for the Broncos, they show all the excitement of a fern.”)  But he did what was asked of him, year in and year out, and that was to be the featured running back in Dan Reeves’ prehistoric offense.  You see, Coach Reeves had at his disposal one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, John Elway, and capitalized on this situation by insisting on a run-first offense.  As my Dad once put it, the Dan Reeves playbook was, from first down through fourth: run right, run left, pass, punt.  Sammy fulfilled his role, whatever it was from year to year, with class.

After retirement (Sammy stepped away at a relatively young 31, opting to leave while he was still healthy rather than chase a few more years, probably with another team), Sammy returned home to Mississippi.  He lives there with his family and owns and operates a construction company with his brother.

Image from SI Vault – Cover of volume 61, no. 17, October 8, 1984.