Sugar makes way for latest ‘great white hopeless’

Angelo Dundee last month and now Bert Sugar. The old guard is really crumbling. I was very fortunate to meet Mr Sugar at a boxing press conference in Manhattan last summer. It was nothing but a brief and essentially insignificant encounter for that old doyen of this sporting life but it did mean my sycophantic bucket list was a tad lighter.

Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz were the fighters in the spotlight that hot morning near Times Square but Mr Sugar circled the room with a swagger that was infinitely more authentic, his star appeal fuelled by that unlit cigar and majestic fedora.

The fedora is either a running joke of modern journalists who look back ironically at simpler times or it’s a staple fashion item of male and female hipsters who look back ironically at everything. But for Bert Sugar, it was an essential component of a carefully managed image that aimed to preserve some of the old values of sport which for him were best exemplified in the ancient pastimes of boxing and baseball.

I always wonder how the current state of sport sits with the Bert Sugars across the industry. Naturally they watch helplessly as their chosen game grows and softens and develops a gaudy sheen. And they all watch us, the young, overconfident and underprepared usurpers, with that universally suspicious eye. And of course they long for that other era when less was more and the greatest athletes were either understated or overwrought.

Bert Sugar passed away on Sunday, just hours before the new series of Mad Men landed on US television screens. In the 1960s, he actually lived the oddly hedonistic life depicted in that show until he shoved his boss through a window out onto a balcony high above Madison Avenue. He immediately left the advertising industry and pursued his publishing dream within the fight game of his youth, the self-confessed “great white hopeless” would now employ his strengths outside the ring, all the while cultivating that look and rattling out history books and legendary quotes.

There’s no need to over-egg the era that rewarded his brave decision to go it alone. So much fertile ground, so many iconic athletes on the verge of coaxing ink onto paper.

The people who knew him best have paid Bert Sugar proper tribute. It seemed perverse, however, that as New York bade farewell to an icon, the world spun on and the city opened its arms wide for the most high-profile low-quality player the NFL has ever concocted. As Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times on Sunday, “The Prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh. St Paul was sent to Athens, Macedonia, Rome. And now Tim Tebow has been sent to New York City.”

Quite why the Jets have moved mountains in Colorado to bring him here is as yet unclear but judging by the 200 accredited media that gathered in New Jersey on Monday, it is a move loaded with marketing possibility and political intrigue.

In the city where an Asian-American basketballer with a strong Christian mindset took over a stadium before conquering the NBA and then the world, the potential for someone like Tebow is limitless.

The New York Jets can deny it all they like but when they rushed through the signing of Tebow last Wednesday, the Jeremy Lin phenomenon was fresh in their minds as they fought off competition from the amiable player’s home state of Florida.

Indeed, the move was completed so hastily that neither the Jets management nor their lawyers read the small print which pointed out that they’d have to cover some advance fees paid to Tebow by the Denver Broncos — roughly €4 million. But the Jets knew they’d make this back in jersey sales. They’ll cash in all summer but when September rolls around, the vultures will begin to circle. He is officially a back-up to regular quarterback Mark Sanchez, who signed a lucrative new deal a couple of weekends ago, but whatever role he is expected to have will have no impact on how many jerseys with the number 15 are thrown on the shoulders of young Tri-Staters.

But the components that matter on the field, the ones that launched a thousand frenzied debates, none of which have concluded with him being described as a competent NFL quarterback, that footballing side of Tim Tebow will be picked apart by the scavengers of the New York sports media. It’s a recipe for excruciating drama and heads are sure to roll.

Sadly, as the old stock begins to diminish, this is all we have to fill the void.

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