THE MIGHTY QUINN

by Larry Carlson for TLSN

While many folks enjoy the sport of schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the failure and humiliation of another (I confess to being gleeful at losses absorbed by certain hated teams), virtually everyone relishes a good story of redemption.

Texas fans got an epic tale of such on Saturday night with the stirring victory over Alabama.

At the top of the redemption list was Quinn Ewers. The young man who turned 20 last spring has lived his life under the microscope since he was a junior at Southlake Carroll. He was excoriated for leaving high school a year early, ridiculed for getting just a few snaps of garbage time at Ohio State and for his bleachy "Joe Exotic the Tiger King" mullet haircut.

And that was before he transferred to Texas, took on enormous presssure and couldn't hit many passes in tough losses to Oklahoma State and TCU last season.

He's had his barbershop treatments discussed this year as if he were John, Paul, George and Ringo in '64.

But there he was at Tuscaloosa, coolly performing a vivisection of Bama's secondary for 349 yards and three lovely touchdown passes that made him the state of Alabama's most feared creature since the boll weevil.

Usually stoic behind the facemask and on the sidelines, Ewers beamed a Texas-sized smile for ESPN's Holly Rowe in a postgame interview. "God is good," Quinn said, displaying a grateful sense of inner peace and calm, at once both humble and confident in his team, coach, and place.

Barely 12 hours later, I heard national radio pundits saying they were happy to see him show "fired up" emotions late in the game as Texas punched back hard and snuffed any chance of the Tide turning. But these analysts claimed Ewers "needs" to show more emotion to be a leader.

I heartily disagree. But I know I'm not just old school. I am of the ancient school. I never even smiled in Little League baseball. For me, it was serious.

So...I always loved that the Texas Longhorn football players of my youth seemed more like quiet assassins than reveling rowdies who celebrated each semi-successful play as if it had won the game.

Businesslike guys such as Bjorn Borg, Derek Jeter and Tim Duncan always seemed in control, going about their derring-do like so many poker-faced James Bonds of the sporting world. Cool. Sure.

It never made sense to me when NFL "experts" would whine about Eli Manning's "bad body language."

It didn't seem to rattle Eli or his teammates that he wasn't demonstrative. Two Super Bowl championships did the talking and gesturing for "Easy E" and his Giants.

Longhorn fans want to follow up the redemptive story of their football team and its quarterback with another victory. And another, and so on. Let's be confident that like this preternaturally calm QB, forged by fire and criticism as a teenager, can indeed follow the cliche and take it one game at a time.

The immortal Bob Dylan wrote a song in the sixties, called "Quinn the Eskimo." When Manfred Mann popularized the tune, the band retitled it as "The Mighty Quinn," and the tempo got pumped up, more bouncy and fun.

Several stanzas from the song made me smile this morning, as I replaced the radio pundits in my earbuds with an old playlist for the remainder of a brisk, pleasant walk while savoring the Horns' big, big win.

"Come all without

Come all within

You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn...

Everybody's in despair

Every girl and boy

But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here

Everybody's gonna jump for joy."

It sure sounds like Dylan was prescient when he penned that more than 55 years ago. Quinn looked cooler in the Tuscaloosa humidity than any Eskimo, er, Inuit, could hope to.

Rock on, young Mr. Ewers. Stay calm and at peace, amigo. The rest of us can jump for joy.

(TLSN's Larry Carlson teaches sports media at Texas State University and lives in San Antonio.

He is a member of the Football Writers Association of America. Write him at lc13@txstate.edu)