We All Speak Ball

What Joey Harrington, Ki-Jana Carter, Jonathan Ogden, B1G legends and a Golf Course Reminded Me About America

Last fall, Dan Lanning went viral for talking about how the USA could learn a lot from the Oregon Ducks locker room. It’s one of the most diverse rooms in the world, with different opinions, different backgrounds.

I thought about that as our country celebrates its 250th birthday while I’m in another country on vacation.

I thought about it even more when I reminisced at the golf tournament I was fortunate to host last week for Joey Harrington’s Safeway Foundation Battle at Bandon. It’s the 14th year that Joey has hosted it and it was an all-time event.

The playing field was made up of players from all over the Big Ten. Household names like Ki-Jana Carter, Mike Alstott, Tim Dwight, Jonathan Ogden, Eric Crouch and more. Men who earned huge cheers and also received loud boo’s. And men who, decades later, are still admired.

For me, it was amazing. I’m not a great golfer but I got to learn the game at Bandon Dunes, bring the real golfer in my family (my wife Amy), and spend three and a half days with players I used to pretend to be in the backyard as a kid, like O.J. McDuffie.

As the weekend went on I listened to Danny Farmer crack jokes and was in awe as Jonathan Ogden walked with a humility that felt almost unknown for someone who’s probably the best there’s ever been at what he does. I laughed with Tim Dwight and learned the story of Brad Banks. I took notes listening to Dhani Jones explore philosophy and connected with Joey Galloway, who we all watch each Saturday night in the fall. And I got to go down memory lane with Matt Barkley, who I recruited to USC back in the day.

At one point on the final day, I watched all these players walk past the 10th hole, where they’d get interviewed by our production crew, and I thought to myself: I wish people from all over the USA could see this.

We’ll air an hour show on Big Ten Network and it will be incredible, but to be there, to feel it, was something I miss quite often.