Thinking About Stuff
Professional and most College sports don't hold much appeal for me. There was a time that I was a sports crazed fanatic. But you can get too much of a good thing. And major sports isn't even a good thing anymore, most of the time. Sports pages are more of a police blotter these days.
So it was with some interest that I followed the past week's stories of BYU Senior Mark Bigelow. He jumped off the bench with seconds left in BYU's loss to New Mexico. ESPN made fun of him. It was a mess and I wondered why Bigelow was so stupid.
Dick Harmon wrote a satisfying article in today's Deseret News. Harmon explains that Bigelow jumped off the bench because of an inadvertent whistle blown by a still anonymous official.
Bigelow faced the press and didn't try to blame anyone for his unusual behavior. New Mexico area newspaper writers looked into the incident and discovered that a whistle had been blown. Instead of admitting to this mistake the officials skulked about and left a young man to endure national ridicule.
But this story has a happy ending, at least for Bigelow. The Mountain West Conference has disciplined the official, releasing this unnamed individual from several assignments, including the BYU/New Mexico rematch later this month and the Conference Championship in March. Bigelow is vindicated for his behavior. More important, as Harmon points out, here is a young sports figure who kept his cool and looks like a role model that we should admire.
This sort of thing happens all too infrequently. And there isn't enough attention paid to those among us who do good things. Thanks to Mark Bigelow for showing a touch of class that is all too often missing in today's sporting world............
6:22:08 PM 
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