Sports Then and Now

Before news broke that Cecil Newton had shopped the services of his son to college teams, they appeared to be the feel-good story of college football in 2010.

You know how sometimes you make a decision that seems to be a good short-term choice, but when looked in the bigger context probably wasn’t such a smart idea? Well, I can’t help thinking of that kind of notion when thinking about Cam Newton and the record-setting performance he had yesterday in his first game for the Carolina Panthers.

Even though the Panthers lost, given that Newton threw for more yards in his professional debut than any quarterback in NFL history, today should be a day when Newton is celebrated nationwide as a budding superstar and starts to cash in on his mile-wide smile, dynamic personality and athletic ability.

However, while I believe there is general appreciation for his performance and ability, I get the sense that many people across the country aren’t really interested in signing up for the “Cam Era” and likely will never embrace him in the way that his talent and potential might deserve.

You can choose to say that the reason for this is that he is a black quarterback in what is still predominately a white quarterback world, but I will respectfully disagree.

Instead, I believe that players such as Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham, Doug Williams, Donovan McNabb, Daunte Culpepper, Michael Vick and others have paved the way for someone like Cam Newton to be the face of a franchise and the face of the NFL.

In my opinion, the biggest reason that Cam Newton isn’t receiving the unbridled love of sports fans across the country can be traced to one of those short-term decisions. When Cam’s father, Cecil Newton, chose to hold discussions about how much it was worth to certain universities to secure the services of his son, Cecil unknowingly forever altered how his son is perceived by the sports world.

Whether or not you believe that money changed hands (to my knowledge no evidence of this has been proven) or whether you believe that Cam knew about the discussions (as of now the NCAA has ruled that he didn’t), you cannot help but look at Cam in a different light than if his father had respected the rules of amateur athletics and the NCAA and waited until after his son had completed his college career to cash in financially.

I have little doubt that if the world had never learned that Cecil Newton tried to trade the services of his son to Mississippi State for a six-figure cash deal, Cam Newton would have been the toast of the sports world even before his amazing NFL debut. Read the rest of this entry →

The Carolina Panthers selected Cam Newton with the first pick in the 2011 NFL Draft.

A bizarre and rapid rise from obscurity to super stardom has taken an interesting turn with the selection of Cam Newton as the first pick in the 2011 NFL Draft by the Carolina Panthers.

The selection means that the Panthers, who were 2-14 a year ago, are putting their future in the hands of a quarterback who has shown tremendous potential, but has just one season of experience as a starter at a big-time college.

Interestingly, this marks the first time since the initial draft for the franchise in 1995 that they have used a first round pick on a quarterback.

They certainly are hoping that this choice has better long term results than when they chose Kerry Collins with the fifth overall pick in the 1995 draft.

While Collins led the Panthers to the NFC Championship Game in just his second season in the league, by 1998 he was gone following a series of incidents that illustrated that Collins wasn’t mature enough to be the face of a football team when he joined the Panthers.

Panther fans are hopeful that history won’t repeat itself with Newton, a young man for which there are similar concerns about whether he has the discipline and maturity to be the face of an NFL franchise. Read the rest of this entry →

Cam Newton easily won the Heisman Trophy for 2010.

If this were a perfect world, Cam Newton might have been the first unanimous winner in Heisman Trophy history. Few college players have so overwhelmed a season as Newton has done in 2010. Every time his team the Auburn Tigers needed a big play to keep their undefeated season going, Newton used either his arm or legs to lift the Tigers to victory.

However, we all know that this is not a perfect world and unfortunately while a strange off-the-field situation didn’t cost Newton the Heisman Trophy, it did cost him a chance at the highest point total and largest margin of victory in the 76 year history of the award.

Even with being omitted on 105 of 886 completed ballots, Newton still eclipsed second place Andrew Luck by more than 1,100 points. Of the ballots where he was included, 93% had Newton rated first.

Now, the question becomes whether Newton will be able to keep the Heisman or if at some point he becomes the second winner in the last half dozen years to forfeit the award.

In his defense, Newton has starkly claimed and the NCAA has ruled that he was unaware that his father, Cecil Newton, was shopping around his services with the intent to receive money from the college that signed Cam Newton after he spent the 2009 college football season at Blinn Junior College.

These reports began to surface in late October while Newton and the Tigers were rolling through the Southeastern Conference (SEC) on their way to an undefeated regular season and conference championship. No evidence has ever surfaced showing that Auburn made illegal payments in the situation. Read the rest of this entry →