Fort Wayne column in Sports Illustrated

Everett White picked up the latest issue of Sports Illustrated and noticed that SI's Steve Rushin had written a lengthy column on Fort Wayne. Rushin begins:

Minutes after the Colts beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship game, Tony Dungy made an offhand remark about the upcoming Super Bowl between Indianapolis and Chicago, “It’s a shame we have to go to Miami,” the Colts head coach said on CBS. “We should just go to Fort Wayne and play it off there.” And this is what happened next: In Hartford my houseguest father, born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, lunged for the TiVo remote and shouted, “What did he just say? Rewind that! Rewind that!”

In Pleasanton, Calif., Rod Woodson, born and raised in Fort Wayne, saw his phone nearly jump off the end table as if in a cartoon. “When Tony said ‘Fort’–the ‘Wayne’ wasn’t even out of his mouth yet–the phone started ringing,” says the 11-time All-Pro safety, now an analyst on the NFL Network. “It was my mom in Fort Wayne. She was yelling, ‘Did you hear what Tony said?!’”

The full column follows on the continuation page.

Storming the Fort (Wayne)
by Steve Rushin
Sports Illustrated - February 5, 2007

Minutes after the Colts beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship game, Tony Dungy made an offhand remark about the upcoming Super Bowl between Indianapolis and Chicago, “It’s a shame we have to go to Miami,” the Colts head coach said on CBS. “We should just go to Fort Wayne and play it off there.” And this is what happened next: In Hartford my houseguest father, born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, lunged for the TiVo remote and shouted, “What did he just say? Rewind that! Rewind that!”

In Pleasanton, Calif., Rod Woodson, born and raised in Fort Wayne, saw his phone nearly jump off the end table as if in a cartoon. “When Tony said ‘Fort’–the ‘Wayne’ wasn’t even out of his mouth yet–the phone started ringing,” says the 11-time All-Pro safety, now an analyst on the NFL Network. “It was my mom in Fort Wayne. She was yelling, ‘Did you hear what Tony said?!’”

In Westlake, Ohio, Eric Wedge had just returned from a weekend trip to his hometown of Fort Wayne, which is roughly equidistant from Chicago and Indianapolis–a part-Indy, part-Windy mix of Colts and Bears fans. “Anybody familiar with Fort Wayne knows how proud the town is,” says Wedge, the young manager of the Cleveland Indians. “And when Tony said that, we all bowed our chests out a little bit.”

“A lot of people sat up in bed,” says Dan O’Connell, president of the Fort Wayne Convention & Visitors Bureau, which sent Dungy a gift basket in gratitude for the good publicity that often eludes this city of 248,341, its citizens unsung or undersung throughout history.

Called the Dumbest City in America (by Men’s Health in 2005) and the Fourth Fattest City in America (by the Centers for Disease Control in ‘02), Fort Wayne has attractions that are somewhat subtler than Miami’s. “They have South Beach, we have Southtown Mall,” says O’Connell. And yet no American city would be a more fitting host for the Super Bowl, and not merely because that Sunday is the biggest day of the year in television, whose inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth, lived there throughout the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s–and had to sue RCA to get credit for his creation.

Super Sunday is among the worst days of the year for drunken driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Breathalyzer was invented by Fort Wayne’s own Robert F. Borkenstein.

Fort Wayne hosted professional baseball’s first night game, lit by Jenny Electric in 1883. And the NBA was, in a manner of speaking, conceived on a kitchen table here in 1949, when Fort Wayne Pistons owner Fred Zollner brokered the merger between the BAA and the NBL in his home.

The U.S. Soccer star DaMarcus Beasley is from Fort Wayne, but it’s American football that runs through Fort Wayne’s arteries–literally so, if the city follows through on its plan to dye the Saint Mary’s River Colts Blue and the Saint Joseph River Beary navy-and-orange, so that when the two meet to form Fort Wayne’s third river, the Maumee, all bets will be covered.

“Good talent comes from everywhere,” says Woodson, who attended Snider High, “and Fort Wayne has shown that.” This small city has four players in the NFL: Steelers lineman Trai Essex (Harding High), Cowboys tackle Jason Fabini (Bishop Dwenger), Panthers punter Jason Baker (Wayne) and Chiefs defensive back Bernard Pollard (South Side).

On the south side there’s a little park at the end of Reynolds Street, where Woodson grew up. The Bears and The Colts could get it on there. “I know Tony was joking,” says Woodson, “but the Super Bowl gives kids a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the big hoo-rah in their own town.”

And what better town to host America’s biggest hoo-rah? After planting the rest of this nation, he was himself planted, beneath Johnny Appleseed Park in Fort Wayne. “There’s a great sense of pride in America there,” says Wedge, who won a state baseball championship at Northrop High. “It’s a Midwestern town that’s held onto its values while still moving into the 21st century.”

But not too far forward. “We don’t have the hotel rooms for tens of thousands of people,” says O’Connell. “But I guarantee you, we’d put everybody up in our homes. And they’d all get a hot meal, family-style.”

Fort Wayne’s favorite son returns home every summer to run a football camp. “People are so rooted and humble there,” says Woodson, a veteran of three Super Bowls.

Like Woodson, my father (Central Catholic High) left Fort Wayne at 18, to accept a football scholarship to Purdue. But it wasn’t until I saw him go glassy-eyed at a single throwaway line uttered on national TV that I knew my father’s full story: Not how he left Fort Wayne. But how Fort Wayne never left him.

Comments

[Nancy Nall]

Well, that was fairly lame. And patronizing. I don't think I've seen such an insincere pat-pat-pat on the head since the clerk at the license branch praised my toddler's scribbles: "Well, aren't YOU an artist? Yes you ARE."

[Everett White]

I rather enjoyed the column. I don't think if it was meant to be patronizing, SI or Steve Rushin would have wasted a full page on it.

The fact that at least one NATIONAL publication took Dungy's comment and talked about it in a positive light is a good thing for Fort Wayne.

I'd rather be positive about the free publicity for the city than negative and ungrateful.

[Cathy Dee]

Well, I must have read a different column, or be from a different planet, because I kind of liked it. At least it has a more positive tone than 99% of the (very limited) stuff we read about Ft. W.

[John Wonderly]

I though it was great. Maybe living in Huntington we don't suffer from that big city envy so many in the Fort-or formerly in the Fort-seem to have.

[Roger McNeill]

Hey, publicity is publicity.

Even if it is only a pat-pat-pat on the head, it's a heck of a lot better press than the normal "fattest" or "dumbest".

Bask!!!!

[Dan Turkette]

Nancy, you really do hate Fort Wayne, don't you?

[Nancy Nall]

If I hated Fort Wayne, I would have been pretty stupid to stay there 20 years, wouldn't I?

No, it's the Special-Olympics tone of the column that I object to. Think about what this is about, really: A football coach makes an offhand comment in a postgame interview, and the city goes crazy: He spoke our name on national television! What fabulous publicity this is!

Is the city that starved for attention that it pees its collective pants over a passing mention in a postgame interview? This is "good publicity?"

The parts where Rushin quotes people -- Wedge, Woodson -- who are proud of being from Fort Wayne isn't the part that bugs me. It's the empty b.s. about no American city being better-suited to host the game (except for that small matter of lacking a stadium and hotel rooms for tens of thousands). Because television was invented there! And the Breathalyzer! And night baseball! (Did O'Connell FedEx him a pamphlet or something?)Someone alert the NFL.

And then there's palaver like this: “There’s a great sense of pride in America there,” says Wedge, who won a state baseball championship at Northrop High. “It’s a Midwestern town that’s held onto its values while still moving into the 21st century.”

Could there be a triter assessment of civic virtues outside of, say, a commercial for Chevy trucks? Does anyone who reads this realize that EVERY COMMUNITY IN AMERICA believes some version of this about itself? This could have come from the script of that stupid Indiana News Center promo you were all tearing to pieces a few days ago.

But ultimately, what I finally look for in stories like this is how people back up their blah-blah. It's so easy to be nostalgic about and proud of a place you don't live in anymore. Woodson comes back to run his pro football camp every year; he cashes the check he writes with his words. However, note the author, or the author's father, who apparently left town at 18 and hasn't lived there since. It's a truism of Fort Wayne that "it's a great place to raise a family." And yet, like so many Midwestern cities, once the kids are raised many move to places like Indianapolis, Chicago or Atlanta to find work and careers (and major-league sports) -- and raise their families there. But hey, the city will dine out on a "native" like Carole Lombard (who moved away at, what? Age 6?) for decades.

Finally, remember that a Super Bowl is a lot more than a game. It's preceded by at least a week of bad behavior that folks in the Fort, with their humility and rock-solid Midwestern values, would find appalling. Last year in Detroit, Jenna Jameson came to town with a dozen or so other porn stars to host a "lingerie fashion show" at a local nightclub. They charged something like $500 a head to a bunch of drooling wankers to watch Jenna's girls prance around in thongs and push-up bras. And that was only the start of it. People like Diddy and Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton and Hugh Hefner parachuted in, took over a few buildings and threw parties for which the country's most alluring "erotic entertainers" were flown in by the planeload. How the City of Churches would puff out its chest with pride when those gals threw down at the Grand Wayne Center!

I liked Woodson's quote: “I know Tony was joking, but the Super Bowl gives kids a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the big hoo-rah in their own town.”

And I think it's safe to say, Rushin's boosting or not, that no kid in Fort Wayne will see such a thing in their lifetime -- unless they move to Indianapolis.

[John Wonderly]

What a bitter screed.

[Alex Jokay]

All this hoo-rah over this wee bit of adulation makes me want to psychoanalyze Fort Wayne as well, Nance. Actually, I'm rather worried about Fort Wayne's fragile psyche should the Bears prevail. I suspect all the people who arranged to be off work Monday are planning it as a "mental health day" just in case.

[Gloria Diaz]

I'm not a huge fan of Fort Wayne, but really, it would be cool if they played the Super Bowl here. Football strikes me as a stop-go, stop-go game played by crazy people in all sorts of weather (the Packers are a great example of this, but Go Pack!) and since it's so frickin' cold here right now, why NOT play it here? Playing the Super Bowl in a warm environment smacks of wimpiness. If you're gonna play a macho game like football, prove that you're macho enough to take the weather, too.

[Michael Gallagher]

Nancy Nall, why don't you leave Fort Wayne alone. You couldn't cut it here, or your subsequent travels. It's all in fun and a way for the city to get some promotion. Why don't you write a blog about how the BMV talks down to children?

[Brian Stouder]

"All this hoo-rah over this wee bit of adulation makes me want to psychoanalyze Fort Wayne as well, Nance"

Oh for pity sakes!

Hey - a nice comment got made by the Colts coach, and it was grist for Ft Wayne's local talk radio and watercooler conversations around town. It's all a bit of fun, right?

And then Sports Illustrated - a national publication - picked up the ball and ran with it, which was even more fun; and positive national pieces about Fort Wayne IS undeniably a good thing!!

If anything, I think people who want to see "plasticized" Chinese people, sliced and diced and posed in entertaining ways (and who, we are told, all gavce their permission for this!!??!!) deserve the front places in the line for psychoanalysis....but that's just my opinion! (and Alex - I made much the same comment on Nance's blog, and then got edited out! Go figure, eh?)

[Denny Kearns]

I was impressed that Dungy had heard of Ft. Wayne. I've been away longer than I lived there, but it was still fun to hear on national TV

[Angela Hess]

Are you people serious? You all are making Fort Wayne look much worse than the article did. The only mistake in the article was that Southtown mall doesn't exist anymore and instead we have a beautiful shopping center in Jefferson Pointe, however that doesn't compare with South Beach. Why can't we be happy that we are considered to have good midwest morals? At least we aren't considerd the crime capital of the world. You all need to see the big picture, this is a great city, or as we often call it a big city in a small town atmosphere and that is the way we like it. We thank Tony for the mention, but I am sure he just thought of us as the meeting point of Chicago and Indy, THAT'S IT!!!