By Michael Miner
In the Tribune Bernie Lincicome railed against “the essential dishonesty, the basic fraud of the thing. Every yard in a football game is under dispute, every inch is to be won. Otherwise this might as well be soccer or lawn croquet.”
What happened at the Super Bowl happened last fall in fine newspapers everywhere. The Gil Thorp comic strip appears daily in the Tribune sports section, but perhaps Lincicome doesn’t read it. A pity.
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True, the situation the Milford Mudlarks found themselves in was even more extreme than the crisis facing the Packers. Rallying behind freshman quarterback sensation Jarvis White, Milford trailed Oakwood 15-14 with 50 seconds left to play. As the Mudlarks prepared to kick off, White called time and suggested a play to his coaches. Let’s go to the dialogue balloons:
“Warner’s kick is short, Paul! Something’s up!”
“Who thought of letting Oakwood score so they couldn’t run out the clock?” wonders Marty Moon, the play-by-play guy.
Jenkins has been writing Gil Thorp only since 1996, when Jack Berrill, the strip’s creator, died. Naysayers might argue that Jenkins is insufficiently grounded in the ethical traditions of his jut-jawed hero, who’s never cut a corner in his life. They might whisper that the Johnny-come-lately fails to understand that while life rewards the ersatz, sport is supposed to be genuine. I wondered if Jenkins worshiped at the altar of the New Morality.
