Today’s column pertains to vocabulary word ‘portal’

Poor “portal.” It was once a word used primarily to refer to the “architectural composition surrounding and including the doorways and porches of a church or cathedral” – a “grand or imposing opening.”

 

With the rise of the Internet, however, “portal” became the preferred word to define an “opening platform that provides specialized access, services and information.” For example, within the realm of health care, physicians’ offices and other health care providers now offer “patient portals” where one can view his or her medical records, communicate with staff and tap into a host of resources.

 

Most recently, “portal” has become associated with college athletics and the system that enables athletes to transfer from one institution to the next…and get paid to play collegiate sports.

 

Dr. Rob Schwarzwalder, a professor at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. (shown below), said the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door in 2021 for college athletes to enter into NIL (name, image and likeness) deals, “whereby they could endorse products and sell their autographs.”

 

One thing led to another, and now the athletes are using the transfer portal as a ticket to secure huge compensation packages from the major universities.

Entering the transfer portal is a simple process, according to sports journalist Victoria Moorwood (shown below). “Athletes tell their current school’s compliance office they have decided to explore a transfer, and the compliance office then has two business days to enter that athlete’s name into the portal,” she said.

 

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of players have transferred from one school to another, Dr. Schwarzwalder said, and it’s only going to multiply.

The major universities in the “power conferences” – the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big Twelve and Southeastern Conference – are doling out millions of dollars to “buy” players.

 

The demise of the Pacific 12 Conference was all about one thing – money,” Dr. Schwarzwalder said. Oregon, Southern California, UCLA and Washington left the Pac 12 to join the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah shifted to the Big 12. The ACC took in California and Stanford.

Original PAC 12 members Oregon State and Washington State were passed over, causing Dr. Susan Shaw, a professor at Oregon State (shown below), to put it succinctly: “TV rights and cold, hard cash dismantled the Pac-12.”

 

Many college sports fans, including former coaches, believe the portal is “out of control” and could ruin college football and basketball, which are the primary revenue-generating sports.

Cliff Ellis, a retired college basketball coach whose resume includes stays at Auburn and Clemson (shown below), recently contributed as column to The Tennessean newspaper, published in Nashville, in which he stated: “College sports will implode if we don’t fix the problem with the transfer portal and NIL.”

 

“The system is broken,” Ellis said. “Coaches are leaving the profession and will continue to leave because they now are coaching ‘professional’ players in a college sport at the NCAA Division I level.”

“Teams are built and destroyed by the transfer portal/NIL system. On the average, transfers affect almost half of a team’s roster without accounting for graduation or other attrition. That’s insane. Teams can go from bad to good overnight or from good to bad,” Ellis said.

 

“At one time giving a student recruit a T-shirt would bring an NCAA investigation. Now a million-dollar NIL deal gets a quarterback.”

Or perhaps $4 million. That’s what sources say the University of Miami in Florida is paying Carson Beck to play quarterback next year. It’s insane.

Beck spent the last two fall seasons at Georgia as its starting quarterback, and he had given notice to the team that he was opting out of his final year of college eligibility, headed for the National Football League draft after the 2025 college playoffs.

 

Beck suffered a serious injury to his throwing arm in the Southeastern Conference championship game and was sidelined from further action. His recovery is likely, but doctors say he can’t begin to toss a football until March 2025, at the earliest. His NFL value was suddenly in jeopardy.

Rather than risk falling to a lower round in the NFL draft, Beck decided to enter the college transfer portal, and Miami scooped him up immediately.

 

What the portal giveth, the portal can also taketh away. 

Take the case of Mason Mini, a tight end from the University of Idaho, a member of Big Sky Conference, which is considered a “non-power conference” by the NCAA.

Mini, a rising redshirt sophomore, drew a lot of interest in the portal, and on a Monday, he was committed to Michigan State University of the Big Ten. The MSU sports information team blasted out the good news. By Wednesday, Mini had flipped to California of the ACC.

 

He rationalized that the California campus in Berkeley is closer to his hometown of Pacifica, Calif. Can’t argue that. The two San Francisco Bay area communities are separated by about 27 miles.

 

“While the court’s judgment corrected a wrong” to enable athletes to share in the profits of collegiate athletics, “it was not accompanied with measured and wise guidance on how to keep what is good about college athletics while compensating student athletes,” Ellis continued.

“For instance, there should be some transparency to the process. Open and honest reporting of NIL transactions would force an appearance of legitimacy. At the present, there is no salary cap in the NCAA structure,” he said.

“Pro teams have managed free agency with rules and restrictions. There are basically no restrictions in college athletics. For example, a player can leave at any time, which is not always good for an immature 18-year-old,” Ellis said.

“Contracts govern professional sports but there are essentially no contracts with student athletes relating to NIL. Instead, there’s an understanding. Many of the same elements of a formal contract should be applied when student athletes enter an NIL agreement.”

Things get even more complicated with the presence of professional agents who represent the athletes, offering advice for a fee to help with marketing, legal issues, tax laws and other business dealings.

Ellis predicts that fans will lose interest in the game because they can’t keep up with players in the portal’s revolving doors, and “when it becomes the same old dancers” at the NCAA basketball tournament, “with no Cinderellas, fan support will wane further.”

In the opinion of Aaron Tallent of the Athlon Contributor Network, the most impressive Cinderella team of all-time was the George Mason Patriots, who entered the 2006 NCAA tournament as a No. 11 seed and knocked off Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut to make the Final Four. 

The Patriots lost to Florida, who won the national title.

“We need to save the game before it implodes,” Ellis said.

The sad thing is, Ellis said, is that “education gets lost in this system. ‘Student’ is no longer a valued part of the athlete’s experience.”

The ball is in the court of NCAA President Charlie Baker to hammer out accords with the U.S. Congress, state governments and college and conference officials who “must join forces with their hearts and minds to fix this broken system,” Ellis concluded.

 

Baker took the job in 2023, after completing two terms as Governor of Massachusetts. He earned a degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he was a member of the men’s varsity basketball team. Baker holds an M.B.A. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

 

 

 

Can the Detroit Lions shake off ‘Bobby Layne Curse?’

Entering the 2025 NFL Super Bowl playoffs, the Detroit Lions have the best record (15-2) and the No. 1 seed in the National Football Conference.

Fans all across the “mitten state” are hoping and praying that this will be the year in which the Lions roar.

The Lions have never played in the Super Bowl game, which originated in 1967.

The last time Detroit won the old NFL Championship Game was in 1957, when the Lions defeated the Cleveland Browns.

Expect to be reading and hearing a lot about the “Bobby Layne Curse” as the reason why the Detroit football organization has been so anemic and pitiful all these years.

Layne, who came out of the University of Texas, was considered by many to be the best quarterback to ever wear a Detroit uniform. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Seemingly out of the blue, coach George Wilson traded Layne abruptly early in the 1958 season. Wilson told Layne about the trade in a telephone conversation, not face-to-face. Layne was visibly shaken and angry. Detroit Lions fans were livid; players were distraught. Sports journalists shifted into high gear.

Joe Schmidt, the Lions’ stellar middle linebacker, was quoted as saying: “I think it’s a big mistake. He’s…a damned good quarterback.” Layne had carried Detroit to titles in 1952 and 1953 and to the final game in 1954.

“I think Bobby had the attitude that, hey, ‘I brought championships to you, and now you’re going to broom me?’” Schmidt said.

As he cleared out his locker, preparing to ship off to his new team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Layne muttered that the Lions would “not win another championship for 50 years,” with expletives deleted.

Did he really say that? Bobby Layne’s son, Alan Layne, once told a sports journalist: “My dad had a temper.” That translates to “he just might have.”

What became clear is that the Lions went from dismal and disgusting to destitute.

Detroit fans were eager for the 2008 season to arrive, to witness the expiration of the 50-year curse. It didn’t happen. Rather, the hex intensified. The Lions became a team of infamy – the first club to go winless (0-16) for an entire season in 2008.

On the bright side, Detroit got the first pick in the 2009 NFL draft. Fans crossed their fingers and toes that the end of the curse was in sight.

The Lions selected Matthew Stafford, a hot-shot quarterback out of the University of Georgia. Was magic in the air? Stafford and Layne went to the same high school in Dallas, Texas.

Yet, there were no fireworks in the sky over Detroit. From 2009-20, Stafford built a solid reputation as a capable performer as the quarterback of a sub-par team…extending the misery in the Motor City for yet another decade.

The trade winds blew in 2021, and Stafford was moved to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for Jared Goff, who played his college ball at the University of California, Berkeley. Initially, Goff fell right into place among the “cursees” – leading the Lions deeper into mediocrity.

But, Stafford – once out from under the weight of the curse – carried the Rams to a stunning Super Bowl victory in 2021.

Goff, give him credit, has persevered and emerged as a true leader among the current group of Lions and has had a spectacular 2024-25 season…thus far.

 

 

More thoughts related to the ‘Bobby Lane Curse’

Commenting on that 1958 Bobby Layne trade so many years ago, contemporary sports writer Mike Tanier delved into the subject for Bleacher Report.

“The Lions were the defending NFL champs. The trade was simply inexplicable,” Tanier reported.

“The football gods heard Layne’s decree” about 50 years of losing “and passed judgment on the Lions. The team underwent more than six decades of “wandering in a wilderness of losing seasons, playoff failures and quarterback controversies,” Tanier said.

“Layne was one of the league’s most recognizable stars. He was the Brett Favre of the 1950s and the NFL’s best quarterback in the first half of the decade. The Lions, also, were one of the NFL’s best in the ’50s. Yes, the NFL was once completely dominated by the mighty Lions and Cleveland Browns,” Tanier wrote.

“When Bobby Layne said ‘block,’ you blocked, and when he said ‘drink,’ you drank,” teammate Yale Lary said of Layne in an oft-repeated quote. Usually, that meant consuming about six highballs on the night before a game.

 

Other notable Detroit players from that era included Doak Walker, Leon Hart, Jack Christiansen, Dick LeBeau and Wayne Walker.

Bobby Layne should have seen that his future with Detroit was in a precarious state. Prior to the 1957 season, the team added Tobin Rote, a veteran quarterback out of Rice, in a blockbuster trade with the Green Bay Packers.

Rote and Layne were platooned at quarterback that year, but when Layne broke his ankle midway through the 11th game, it was Rote who guided the team to Detroit’s 1957 NFL title.

In exchange for Layne, the Steelers gave Detroit the rights to Earl Morrall, a local boy from Muskegon, Mich., who built an outstanding resume as a collegian at Michigan State University, excelling as a football quarterback and as a baseball infielder. Morrall was offered the opportunity to play professional baseball but chose pto football instead.

The plan with the Lions was for Morrall to be Rote’s backup.

Detroit Free Press sportswriter George Puscas was one who bought into the “curse.” He wrote: “Did you ever see a team with Morrall and no morale?”

(For the record, during his 21-year NFL playing career, Morrall became one of the best backup quarterbacks in league history, most notably stepping into the spotlight to relieve Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts in 1968 and Bob Griese of the Miami Dolphins in 1972 during their Super Bowl runs. Morrall earned three Super Bowl championship team rings.)

“In the 1990s, the Lions were a very good team; Barry Sanders led them to the postseason five times in 10 years,” Tanier said. “But they kept losing in the playoffs.”

Tanier said that Mitch Albom (shown below), a Detroit columnist before he became a bestselling author, weighed in on the subject: “As the years went past, the curse got more body to it. It was a whisper once and then it was like, maybe this thing is really happening. And then it just became an explanation.”

TODAY gives news celebrity Hoda Kotb a royal ‘ta ta’

Buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride this week as the NBC television network is saying “fare-thee-well” to its morning show co-host who became America’s darling – Hoda Kotb.

She officially vacates her chair as co-anchor of TODAY on Jan. 10, leaving a big hole in the heart of legions of loyal viewers who have embraced Hoda Kotb for her intelligence, personality and charm as well as her caring and loving nature.

Hoda began her co-hosting partnership at NBC’s morning news desk with Savannah Guthrie on Jan. 2, 2018. Together, they have rocked it for six solid years, building market share and closing the gap on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the front runner among the network morning shows.

(Starting Jan. 13, Craig Melvin moves up from the third chair at TODAY to co-host with Savannah.)

Network executives are calling this week’s send-off a “Hoda bration,” and you can bet, there won’t be a dry eye in the studio when the final curtain falls, after the accolades come rolling in from the morning team, headlined by veteran weather forecaster Al Roker (shown below) and featuring Dylan Dreyer, Sheinelle Jones, Carson Daly, Jenna Bush Hager, Peter Alexander, Laura Jarrett, Willie Geist and all the rest of the gang.

Hoda announced in late September 2024, having turned 60 years of age, that it was time to step out of the spotlight and spend more time with her two adopted daughters – Haley Joy and Hope Catherine. “I want to be able to walk my kids to elementary school, with a cup of coffee,” she said.

Hoda assured her fans that she intends to remain part of the NBC family, “repotting herself” into a role yet to be defined.

 

Hoda Kotb was born on Aug. 9, 1964, in Norman, Okla. Her parents, Abdel and Sami Kotb, had immigrated from Cairo, Egypt, in 1960 to study at the University of Oklahoma. Hoda, along with her older sister Hala and younger brother Adel were raised in an English-speaking household, first in Morgantown, W.Va., and then in Alexandria, Va.

Her father was a fossil energy specialist, and her mother worked at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Hoda followed her sister to enroll at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism in 1986. Landing that first television news job was an adventure, to say the least. Hoda tells the story:

“I had a job interview in Richmond, Va., in 1987.” She bought a new business suit, poofed out her hair and borrowed her mother’s car. “One interview, I so ignorantly assumed, would be all it would take to get hired as a television news reporter.” The news director viewed a portion of her 20-minute videotape and said she was too green and wasn’t ready for Richmond. Get some experience and come back in a few years.

“It had not dawned on me that I was not going to be hired,” Hoda said. “As I was leaving, the guy said, ‘I have a buddy in Roanoke (Va.) who will hire you. Drive there tonight and you’ll catch him.’ So I drove to Roanoke that night, and I met the news director there, and he said, ‘I’m sorry. but you’re not ready for Roanoke.’”

“I thought, ‘Who in the hell is not ready for Roanoke?’ Apparently me. As I was leaving, he said, ‘I’ve got a buddy who is hiring in Memphis (Tenn.), but you’ve got to catch him in the morning. So, I drove across Tennessee. I met that news director the next morning and he put my tape in and said, ‘No.’”

Hoda interviewed at more local TV stations. “All of Alabama rejected me” – from Birmingham to Dothan – as did every station located in the Florida panhandle. In total, 27 news directors turned her down.

 

“I turned the car around and headed north back toward Virginia. And then, somewhere in Mississippi, I took a wrong turn. GPS systems and cell phones did not exist; I was officially lost,” she said.

“As I drove around looking for a way to get back on track, I noticed a billboard for WXVT featuring the CBS eye. The station was in Greenville, a TV market I hadn’t considered. I drove to Greenville, digging deep for one last shred of hope.”

(Greenville, located in northwest Mississippi on the Mississippi River near Arkansas, ranks 195th in size among the 210 U.S. TV markets, reaching about 60,000 households.)

“I go in there. There’s this little short guy. His name is Stan Sandroni. He said: ‘Hey, how are you doing? I’m Stan Sandroni. I’m the News Director. I was Sports Director yesterday and got promoted.” What’s your name?’”

“I’m Hoda. He said: ‘Oh good, come on in, Hilda. Let’s go look at that tape. At the very end, he says, ‘Hilda, I like what I see.’” He hired her on the spot as a news reporter. She cried.

Stan Sandroni

Hoda would later say the highway billboard was a “sign from God” (with a Godwink in the form of the station’s callsign ending in “VT”…just meant for the Hokie alumna).

 

“Twenty-seven people thought I was terrible, and one didn’t,” Hoda said. “They say you can be the sweetest orange in the bunch, but some people just don’t like oranges, so you have to go until you find someone who fits with you. I think that was my important take-away, and thanks to Stan for what he did for me.”

One day at WXVT, Hoda said she was “in the newsroom working really hard on a story about how Girl Scouts need more leaders, breaking news. I remember Stan busted in, and asks: ‘OK, who has a blazer?’ A jacket. Who has a jacket?’”

“I replied that I have a jacket. It’s hanging on the hanger. ‘Oh good,’ Stan said, ‘you need to anchor the news, because Anne Martin is sick.’”

“Anne Martin was like Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Oprah all rolled up into one in Greenville. That was her thing. She was out, and it was a big deal. Oh, my gosh. This is my big break. I can do this,” Hoda said.

“I looked right at the camera, and I said, ‘Good evening, I’m Anne Martin.’ Did I just say I’m Anne Martin? I don’t even know my own name to start the news that I’m supposed to be delivering?” The flubs just kept on coming, she said, like a runaway toboggan sliding down a snow-packed hill.

“When the 30-miute nightmare was over, the floor director said, ‘OK. Nice try.’ He took the microphone off to shake off the cooties.”

“The next morning, Stan said: ‘Well, I seen what you did. It was bad, but Anne’s sick again, so why don’t you try one more time.’ He gave me another go. That’s the lesson. It’s not how many times you fall, because you’re going to fall a gazillion times. Everyone notices the recovery.”

“Always bring a jacket to work.”

 

 

Hoda Kotb transitioned from ‘hard news’ to the softer side

Along her journey to “stardom” in the television news and entertainment business, Hoda Kotb served for a time as a reporter at ABC affiliate WQAD in Moline, Ill., prior to becoming a weekend anchor and reporter at CBS affiliate WINK in Fort Myers, Fla. From there, she moved on to serve several years as an anchor and reporter for CBS affiliate WWL in New Orleans.

 

She was recruited by NBC Studios in New York City in 1998 as a correspondent for Dateline NBC and went on to cover some of the most important domestic and international news events of the time, including the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I was fortunate enough to get to cover a lot of different things. They sent me to Baghdad after the statue fell in Iraq and to the West Bank in Gaza. I got to cover the globe. It was fascinating,” Hoda said.

“I like covering hard news. I really do, but I think sometimes your heart gets hard, too.”

While Hoda was a regular on the TODAY news desk, she was offered a co-hosting slot on a new “fourth hour” show in September 2007, working with Ann Curry and Natalie Morales to informally talk about current affairs and other lighter fare.

 

Viewers responded favorably, but when NBC brought in veteran talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford in March 2008 to succeed Ann and Natalie, the pairing of Kathie Lee and Hoda “proved to be momentous.”

Hoda wrote in her memoir. “Kathie Lee brought exactly what our hour needed. We were all in awe of her ability to let it fly.”

An NBC spokesperson wrote: “For 11 years, Hoda and Kathie Lee entertained TODAY viewers with their lively conversations, laugh-out-loud moments, vulnerable revelations (such as Hoda’s battle to survive breast cancer) and sweet friendship.”

 

Even after Hoda was promoted into the TODAY co-hosting role with Savannah Guthrie in 2018, she remained committed to doing the “fourth hour” segment with Kathie Lee with gusto.

 Hoda said that she “was transfixed” by Kathie Lee from the get-go. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had that chemistry where you connect with someone like that. It was a feeling I’d never had before – that kind of intensity.”

When Kathie Lee stepped down in 2019 to pursue her interests in directing and producing film and television projects, NBC turned to Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, as Hoda’s new co-host at the 10 a.m. hour.

Jenna had joined NBC in 2009 as a contributor and correspondent, so she was a familiar face and knew the ropes. Hoda and Jenna quickly bonded and exhibited a unique brand of camaraderie.

(Starting Jan. 13, TODAY’s “fourth hour” will be labeled as “Jenna & Friends,” featuring a revolving cast of guest co-hosts until a permanent co-host is named.)

 

Some of Hoda Kotb’s finest work has been associated with NBC’s coverage of the Summer Olympics, including the games hosted in London, England, in 2012 and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016.

 

One colleague commented: “I can’t think of a bigger fan of Team USA than Hoda. A cheerleader for all the athletes, she became especially close with the U.S. women’s gymnastics team during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.”

Always on the edge of her seat during the competitions, Hoda “helped” the U.S. squad bring home the gold. She was dubbed the team’s “Olympic Momma” by star gymnast Simone Biles.

 

Of all the tributes planned during “Hoda bration,” I hope TODAY reaches out to Hoda’s Delta Delta Delta sorority sisters from Virginia Tech to expand on the origin of “the Ho-dini.”

With so many bases to cover, places to go, people to see and obligations to fulfill – even beginning in college – “Hoda perfected a technique whereby she would arrive at a party, do a quick circle and then sneak out before anybody can even witness it.” Then, Hoda would be on to the next venue…and the next.

It’s called “the Ho-dini” as a tribute to Harry Houdini, the Hungarian-American escapologist and vaudeville performer.

January ushers in an ‘entry to new beginnings’

Welcome to 2025 and the month of January, named after the Roman god Janus. 

He represented both the past and the future as “the god of gates and doorways, the entry to new beginnings,” said Dr. Jamesetta A. Newland (shown below) , a nursing consultant based in New York City.

Janus is often depicted as a two-headed god with one face looking forward and the other face looking backward.”

 

One human who exhibited a similar trait was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose Jan. 15 birthday is observed in the United States as a federal holiday on the third Monday of the month, Dr. Newland said. 

“Particularly appropriate for nurse practitioners as we start 2025 is remembering successes of the past while always recognizing challenges of the future.” Dr. Newland cited Dr. King’s quotation: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Dr. Newland continued: “Professional nurses are critically positioned and ready to promote prevention and wellness over illness and cure; increase access to health care for vulnerable populations; improve health outcomes for individuals with chronic diseases; address mental and behavioral health needs of people; address the social determinants of health to reduce health disparities in our communities; and confront structural racism to disable deep-rooted barriers to health equity.”

In another vein, the Rev. Dr. Ernest S. Lyght of Delanco, N.J. (shown below), a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church, is the author of an essay, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: Looking Back & Looking Forward.”

 

In it, Dr. Lyght wrote: “Dr. King bequeathed America and the world with an abundant legacy. First, he helped the black church understand that it could partner with other community organizations in the struggle for righteousness and justice. Second, Dr. King dared to invite the children and youth to participate in the civil rights demonstrations. Third, he taught his followers to employ the instrument of nonviolent resistance in the face of ‘many dangers, toils and snares.’ Fourth, Dr. King preached the ideal of ‘love’ and lived by the standard of Christian love.

“Fifth, Dr. King also did not compartmentalize his efforts,” Dr. Lyght wrote. “While he waged the fight for civil rights, he was engaged in the peace movement. Although severely criticized, he did not shrink from his commitment to ending segregation as well as the war in Vietnam. Some critics, both black and white, felt that he should stay out of the peace movement. King could not do anything else, because he was a ‘drum major for justice.’”

“Sixth, Dr. King was a man of prayer. We generally remember him for his inspiring oratory. Behind the scenes, however, his personal prayer life gave him strength for the journey,” Dr. Lyght added.  

 

On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was in Memphis, Tenn., to lead a demonstration on behalf of sanitation workers who were on strike for higher wages. “It was there that King was assassinated,” Dr. Lyght said.

“Note, however, that on the previous night, Dr. King had told the gathered congregation that God had allowed him to go up to the mountain. He told them that he had looked over and he caught a glimpse of the Promised Land. He believed that all of the people would one day get to the Promised Land.”

“Because Dr. King lived among us, America is not the same,” Dr. Lyght wrote. “He was a moral leader who made a difference in his nation and the world. He was a leader who helped the nation and the world to look forward to a better future.”