Being John Reagan Could Suck or Sheahon Spade and The Fat Man
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Being John Reagan tonight could be a little like John Cusack playing Craig Shwartz entering a portal into John Malkovich’s head, and finding that inside John Malkovich’s head was a bizarre playing out of The Maltese Falcon in a KU football mystery melodrama.
John Reagan leaves a semi-successful situation to return to KU to try to put some offensive spark in Charlie Weis’ floundering KU program. He does so reputedly to be near his family. There is speculation he might be the heir apparent to Weis, if they turn things around.
Enter the portal now, John.
Instead, the program goes from circling the drain to going down the drain. Weis is dismissed. And Clint Bowen, not Reagan, is named to replace Weis. It appears likely that Clint Bowen will be an interim head coach. The inference inside the portal is that John Reagan will not be the next KU head coach and that John Reagan likely as not will not be on the KU staff next season, unless rumors about re-hiring one Mark Mangino were to come true.
(Note: decided to remove the head shot of Mark Mangino that appeared here briefly, because I felt too lazy to go look up a proper recognition of the source of the photo.)
Inside the portal, it seems, John Reagan nee John Cusack, nee Craig Schwartz, is about to find out how much of a Snyder man Sheahon Zenger really is. Inside or outside the portal, Mark Mangino appears a Snyder protege gone east of Eden. But hiring Mangino would seem to be a kind of expedient in the current storm, unless the character doing the firing and hiring were unreeling a planned three act cinema verite about football. Such a cinematic premise would bring a wronged Snyder man out of Nod and give him a second chance at redemption Sam Peckinpah style, though Sam Peckinpah has no real thematic connection with this drama outside, or inside the portal, so forget about Sam. But screenplay would allow John Reagan to keep doing what he has done well in the past, plus stay with his family.
But this is where the Neo-Post Modernism thickens (or is that congeals?) around the sport of KU football.
Could the Casper Guttman of college football get a magic back that he was already in the process of losing as he was dismissed by one Louie the Perk Perkins?
“I’ll say it right out. I am a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”–Casper Guttman aka The Fat Man from “The Maltese Falcon,” written by John Huston and based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett
But is the former fat man of KU football now able to talk politely enough to players for Sheahon Spade and Bernadette O’Shaughnessy to take him back, to avenge the wrong done his career? And would John Reagan want to play Joel Cairo, or Wilmer, to The Fat Man again?
Mangino and Reagan made a cinematic football classic at KU with that Orange Bowl team. But classics are hard to reshoot without losing the magic. Mostly they blow up in the faces of those that try to repeat them.
Sheahon Zenger has a chance to do something fresh and good outside the portal. Outside the portal, it is time for Sheahon Zenger to hire someone that is a good fit, rather than someone that is an expedient fit. Weis was an expedient fit and expedience blew up in his face the way trying to repeat a classic probably would.
IMHO, Zenger needs to stop listening to all the football people inside and outside the portal, especially the possible John Huston fella inside and outside the portal–one KSU head football coach Bill Snyder. No one understands KU until they have been on the inside of it, least of all Snyder. Better that Zenger covertly enlists Bill Self outside the portal of Being John Reagan. Better Sheahon Zenger enlists the most coaching savvy KU insider there is presently, in the search process. Doing so he could make a strong ally of Self, and in the process increase exponentially his chances of picking a football coach outside the portal that would be a good fit for KU.
Finally, then, Zenger could make a stamp on the KU program by hiring his own man, inspite of who Little, or the deep pockets want and are undoubtedly already pushing on him. Until he does hire his own man outside the portal, Zenger is Little’s man, Little’s Wilmer inside the portal. Zenger’s career and reputation are about to be made, or ruined, by what he does next.
Zenger now appears to have used Weis to sweep the program clean and expose any remaining skeletons on a timer fuser from the Perkins years. S-Canning Weis now suggests he might have planned to use Weis as his broom from the start, and planned to let him go early this season to give Zenger plenty of time to find the man he wants right on shooting schedule, if you will.
The only real question now is whether he brought John Reagan in to pave the way for returning fellow Snyder disciple Mark Mangino aka Casper Guttman aka The Fat Man to head coach status, or whether he let Weis bring Reagan in to keep Weis from getting wise to his soon to be disposed-broom status. The latter scenario could mean it would suck being John Reagan right about now. The former scenario could mean it would not.
Much as I admired John Reagan’s offensive prowess, and empathize with Being John Reagan, and hoped he would become KU’s head coach one day, I hope Zenger finally hires the guy he really wants outside the portal.
No more expedients.
But things are all equally up up to you inside the portal, Sheahon Spade, as well as outside the portal, Sheahon Zenger.
A football, especially as it relates to winning program putting butts in the seats, is like the Falcon: “the stuff dreams are made of.”
The football is in your possession for the moment.
But the real question inside the portal is: are you going to do anything about what happened to Mangino aka The Fat Man? Does Mangino being a Snyder man mean anything to another Snyder man inside the portal? Is Mangino really a kind of Miles Archer to you, Sheahon Spade, or is Mangino just The Fat Man, just Casper Guttman?
If Mangino were Miles Archer to Sheahon Spade, then:
“When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s-it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.”
And for every Snyder football man, too.
Watch out, though, because football inside the portal, like the Falcon, makes some persons do desperate, foolish things.
And footballs take funny bounces inside or outside the portal.
THE END
FADE To Crimson and Blue.
(Note: All a neo post modern fiction. No malice.)
