Yes. Marcia McDermott is actually, one of the women I was referring to as
someone that could literally have done anything; very, very bright
articulate woman. She sort of wrestled with soccer because just like me,
she didn't really consider it a worthy profession. And she's pursuing a
graduate degree in English while she's coaching at the University of
Arkansas. I really liked her because she was bright and witty. We were
bantering back and forth in some practice or actually, before games
about the fact that we knew we were going to win. And at the time, I
guess, the movie "Apocalypse Now" was popular. There was a great scene
in "Apocalypse Now" about this group of men assembling on a hill and
they are watching napalm being sprayed all over the jungle in front of
them. And one of them turns to the other one and says, "Can you smell
that napalm?" "Yeah, I can. It smells like victory." In other words,
whenever the American troops in Vietnam would put napalm down on
anything, it would ensure a victory. And so the analogy we used was that
that was a feeling; there was a smell in the air that we knew we were
going to win. The sort of teams we had then, we knew we were going to
win. We were overwhelming favorites. And you know, in athletics, there's
always tremendous analogy between warfare and athletics. I mean, it's
gone on since the beginning of recorded time. And so, it wasn't a new
analogy. I mean,
Page 39 using war cries to motivate you
in athletics is actually common. And then actually, before the national
championship semifinal, I think we were playing Cal-Berkeley. Because
this was a sort of a running joke all season between Marcia and I, one
of the managers on the team went out to see the movie because we didn't
really have the quote down perfectly. So he went and saw the movie and
it was great. He wrote it down while he was in the movie theater and
then he typed it up. And what I did before the Cal-Berkeley game is I
read the whole quote because it was very lengthy. It was a joke, you
know. But a really powerful joke because, yes, we knew we were going to
win. I mean, it was a great analogy between us and that quote and
everyone was laughing because it's very aggressive, but in a positive
way. It was aggressive for us because we knew we were going to win. I
read it before the game and we won. And then they started asking the
players afterwards, you know, you guys came out on that field like
dynamite, using another military, aggressive analogy, and the girls said
they were really pumped up. And the reporters started asking them, "What
pumps you up for the game?" And they said, "Anson read this quote from
"Apocalypse Now" and it was something that he and Marcia McDermott had
been doing all season when they knew we were going to win before the
game. And we just went out there and we just exploded all over the
field." And so obviously, the press, seeing the chance to jump on
something that's very human interest in a way, because you know, most
people when they read sports pages want more than just the, "I thought
we played great." I mean listening to most athletes talk about
themselves is so
Page 40 boring it's ridiculous and so
when a reporter finally gets something more than: "How do you feel after
winning?" "I feel great." "How do you think the other team played
today?" "Well, I think they played great." "Well, what do you think of
your team?" "Well, I think they're great." When they finally get
something that's more quotable than that, they're going to use it. So
there was an article that morning on the national championship final
about that motivational talk. And actually, the article was good. It
said we were really excited and there was this analogy that we knew we
were going to win and there was the "Apocalypse Now" quote. So then what
happened is our club team on campus decided this is great. They liked
the quote, too, and so they made a banner. I can't remember what the
banner said. Maybe it said, "Napalm, napalm, napalm." For some reason,
that rings a bell. And they carried it to the game, so they're sitting
there and this club team is screaming "Napalm, napalm, napalm" before
the game and they're all into it and they're all excited and we're
excited, but our motivational talk for that game was completely
different. The napalm thing was yesterday's game. And now for the
championship, we had something else. I can't even remember what we used.
Well, because of that banner there, the word went out over the national
championship wire that this was the way we intimidated our opponents,
that we would start screaming this and you know, we went out of our way
to intimidate the opponents by chanting this. And of course, we didn't.
We had nothing to do with it. We had nothing to do with having it there
on the field. We had nothing to do with anything
Page 41
except the fact we had used it as a joke during the season. We used it
as a motivational talk before the semifinal. It had nothing to do with
the final. And so then, actually, it was a woman reporter and I use the
word "woman" because a man wouldn't have written the article the way she
did. And she was a woman actually, that was a part of our team in a way,
because we let her train with us in the off season and she was real
close to a lot of players on the team and we let her work out with us
and this sort of stuff in the spring. And she thought it was horrible,
because she was very anti-Vietnam war, to use this quote from basically,
a negative war to motivate ourselves; that it showed a tremendous
disrespect for the Vietnam veterans and anyone who had to fight over
there and the Vietnamese who were just, you know, fried with this napalm
and stuff. I mean, what a hideous thing to trivialize in athletics. And
so the article that she wrote, maybe it was even an editorial. Maybe it
was a letter to the editor. I can't remember whether it was an article
or an editorial. It probably wasn't an editorial because they don't
[unclear] . It was either an article or
a letter to the editor how she was appalled, you know, about all this.
And she came to the game expecting to watch a soccer game and she saw us
using this. Well, she had everything out of context because it was
locker room stuff for us and it was brought out because the club team
decided to use it. And you know, that we had no sensitivity towards the
people that fought there. And it wasn't because of anything that
happened during the two games, even the stuff that the club team did
because typically, there wasn't enough coverage
Page 42
for that to really get out. You know, local papers had it, but no real
big deal. But it was all sort of buried until her article or letter to
the editor came out. Now that's news. The news is that people were
offended by it. So the news wasn't that it was used for motivation. The
news is that sensitive people were offended by this gruesome use of that
phrase because of what her article said, basically. And she was offended
by it and several of her friends were offended, etc., etc., etc. And so
then it hit the national news. And one reason it hit the national news
as well is, one of the guys that follows all of the games that still
comes by… In fact, he was in my office today. He's a guy named Jim
Furlong. He saw this as an opportunity to really make some money and so
he sent it out all over the country. And sure enough it hit everything.
It hit
Sports Illustrated as one of the worst cheers
of the year. That was our first exposure in
Sports
Illustrated. I can't remember how it went in
Sports Illustrated but it was in one of those little sections
early in the magazine that said something like, "The most morbid cheer
of the year." And then there was even a cartoon in
Sporting
News and they had the grim reaper there with his scythe, you
know, with skulls all over a soccer field and had the quote up there,
you know, and had my name and the team's name up there. So it really got
a negative run of press. And then in the bizarrest of ironies, soon
after that we started getting mail from veterans. They thought it was
wonderful. They thought that for every other war that's occurred, there
have been positive sports analogies to it. And
Page 43
they said they've always been frustrated by the fact that for some
reason their war, every time it's brought up, people have such a
negative stigma about it and they don't appreciate anyone who has ever
fought there and all of our veterans are treated like shit. And all the
letters we got were really positive. They said, "We appreciate the fact
that our war was used to help you guys win." And it was really bizarre
because the way that woman originally wrote the article was that all the
veterans would be hurt by it. And it was absolutely the opposite. So the
bizarre irony was the national media jumped on it like they were being
sensitive to our veterans and the veterans jumped on it like, "You
assholes, we appreciate being remembered. I mean, one of the reasons
we're having all these traumatic experiences now is we come back to this
country and we're totally rejected and it's a pleasure to be back in the
mainstream. What you guys were doing, we felt was really good." Even
though that wasn't our intent. You know what I mean? But still the
ironies of that situation just abounded. But still, it hurt our girls'
feelings, really, because they just play sports. They're not into
politics and it wasn't a political statement and it was nice to get that
mail afterwards. But of course, by then the athletic department advised
us not to rekindle it by sharing the letters from veterans. You know
what I mean? I mean, once that sort of publicity comes out which is
negative, they'd rather just let it die and it did. It did die. But
Marcia and I laugh about it now. But back then, because they used her
name several times, she was really hurt by it.