Fats has been given pink slip
All good things must come to an end.
Thus, we say goodbye to Saturated Fats, the Observer-Reporter’s beloved and rotund pigskin prognosticator for more than 40 years. It might come as a surprise to many, but the Fat Man did not die of a massive heart attack – though he does eat bacon with every meal – rather, he has simply been fired. Or as he prefers to say, his contract was not renewed.
His dismissal, however controversial, was warranted. After all, last-place finishes in the Observer-Reporter‘s weekly football picks contest in 19 of the last 20 years will get you a pink slip. This is a performance-based business and Fats’ performance has been downright embarrassing. If you can’t finish ahead of Joe Tuscano more than once in 20 years, then maybe, as former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll was fond of saying, it’s time to get on with your life’s work. So Fats has taken up another endeavor. He has put down his O-R football preview tabloid and taken up a more noble, rewarding and manly endeavor, chrocheting. If that doesn’t work out, then there’s always hot dog-eating contests.
In Fats’ place in the weekly picks we have turned to two gentlemen – you thought one person could fill Fats’ shoes? – Dave Whipkey and Joe Smeltzer.
Whipkey is a grizzled veteran of the gridiron, having spent time as a sportswriter with the McKeesport Daily News and this will be his fifth season of covering football for the O-R on Friday nights. Dave will likely want to pick McKeesport every week, but we’ll inform him that the Tigers play only three games that will be included in the contest.
As for Smeltzer, he’s the young gun of the group. He’s too young to remember when the Cleveland Browns were a good team or when Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia played each other in football every year.
Young Joe is a baseball guy, which won’t help him picking football winners. You can ask him for the World Series teams, the series outcome and the MVP from any year and he’ll give you the answers in no more than two seconds. But ask him to pick the winner of a Bentworth-Jefferson-Morgan football game and you might get a blank stare.
Smeltzer, however, has knowledge of the area’s football scene. He is a graduate of Waynesburg University, has broadcast many high school games and this will be his third year of covering football for the O-R. He is a West Allegheny graduate, which explains why he believes Tyler Palko is Pitt’s best quarterback of all-time. Dan Marino? Joe never saw him play for the Panthers.
- This corner of Pennsylvania falls short in terms of trophies in high school football.
No, not WPIAL championship trophies or even those participation trophies a youth league player receives.
What I’m referring to is rivalry trophies. College football is filled with these. From the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, to the Little Brown Jug, to the Old Oaken Bucket, to Paul Bunyan’s Axe, to the Apple Cup, it seems that some traveling trophy that will belong to the winner for one year is on the line every Saturday in the fall.
In other areas of Pennsylvania, traveling trophies are at the center of longstanding high school football rivalries and bring a sense of community pride to the winner. The 26-team Lancaster-Lebanon League, for example, has eight games in which the winner gains possession of a traveling trophy and bragging rights.
So why are there no trophy games around here? Monessen and Charleroi is the area’s most-played series but has no winner’s trophy. Greene County neighbors Carmichaels and Jefferson-Morgan have played every year except three since 1924, but in all that time nobody has thought about a traveling trophy.