SAT test trauma & one of the NBA’s bigger issues | Engel Angle

Speaker 1: Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Ingle Angle podcast here in the Sunset Lounge. Thanks for joining me. No guests for this episode. However, I have two topics that I want to discuss, including the first one where I realized God does have a sense of humor and he is laughing at my expense. Then the other one I'm going to talk about is the state of one of my very favorite sports and specifically its coverage, and that is the NBA basketball. First things first. Gonna take you into the way back machine and go into the terror that is my academic background in high school. I was not what you call a good student. I was mediocre to the core. I was a two point zero high school student. Didn't try, didn't crack open the book, but the weird part is, my terrible GPA in my first, second, and third years of high school, I never skipped class ever. I was always there. I just didn't do the work because I hated it. Here's the ironic part. I hated reading. I hated it, says the guy who has written four books and makes his career writing. Very lucrative, Mac. So I digress. I had been told many times by an adult, Mac, you're going to do great on the SAT test. I can tell by talking to you, you're going do really well on the SAT test. And I was fueled by this optimism by all of the adults around me, recognizing that they had no clue what my transcripts, the horror show that was my high school transcript, actually looked like. It's not something that I would have advertised. It was so ugly and god awful at a point of humiliation that it's not like I was going to sit there and encounter a well meaning adult saying, no, no, no, no. Don't get it. I'm a terrible high school student. So sure enough, I have signed up to take the SAT test, the all important exam that will determine the court course of the rest of my entire life. I am surrounded by high school students, all of whom are going to crush this test so they can go to great four year colleges as they project themselves to become whomever. Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights, Supreme Court Justices, etc. Rather than prepare for the test, I decide, you know what? I'm gonna stay up late and watch a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. The date was June 1989. Pretty impressive that I pulled that one out. Equally a tremendous waste of brain space. I am signed up to take the SAT on June 10. June 9, however, the Cincinnati Reds are on TV. I love the Cincinnati Reds. I love Major League Baseball. So my parents are out of town, and my brother, Michael, and I are at the house by ourselves. He's out with friends because he has a life. I'm a junior in high school with no life. So I'm staying home watching a Cincinnati Reds baseball game on the West Coast. Now remind you, back in the late eighties, not all baseball games were on TV. A very limited number of games were on. So when they were on, I was very excited. I was going to watch it. So they started on the West Coast, which means that game probably started at nine, 09:30 my time. Remember, I have a big, big, big test tomorrow. Big test.

Speaker 2: So I stay up late and watch the entire game. Reds win, by the way.

Speaker 1: Very exciting. Reds win. I think Jose Riho or Tom Browning pitched the Reds to a big win. And I go to bed after 12:00 at night. Now, I have set up everything, what I need tomorrow to go take the SAT. I have the piece of paper. That's the form that says I have paid for it. I have my wallet and my car keys all in the kitchen counter. I go to bed. I set the alarm clock for 7AM. I need to be at the test center at 8AM. Okay. The next morning comes and I have overslept. Again, here's another thing that doesn't add up to my GPA. I never overslept for anything. I was always on time to be mediocre. Punctuality was very important to be average. So I wake up, I'll never forget seeing that alarm clock going off beep, beep, beep. I had accidentally done it. I had accidentally set it for the incorrect time. Now at the end of the bed was my very loyal cat, this big giant white cat named Jerry. Jerry would sleep and shed like you wouldn't believe. And he's sleeping at the end of my bed, a single mind you, and I jump out of bed and the cat jumps higher than me. And the first thought in my head is not, Oh my God, I'm late, because it says it is 07:55. The test center opens at 8AM. I'm to be there at 8AM. I have five minutes and the test center is at my high school. And the first thought that goes into my brain is not, I'm going to miss the test. It's, I will never ever hear the end of this in my household. I will hear about this from my dad, my brothers, and my sister until my last day. My mother, maybe not so much. She wouldn't have been happy with me. But the other ones, they're going to kill me about this forever. So

Speaker 2: I skip everything. I don't brush my teeth. I just put on, I run downstairs with the t shirt that I slept in, put on a

Speaker 1: pair of shorts that were on the bedroom floor, put on a pair of flip flops, grabbed the keys, run to the car, a trusty old big blue Bonneville. And I am on my way flying like Knight Rider, dated reference that may be, on my way to the high school, praying I can get there in time. And about halfway there, I realize I'm going to the wrong high school.

Speaker 3: No. No, it will be alright.

Speaker 1: The test center isn't at my high school, it's at a different high school, the one where two of my brothers went. So, it s Saturday morning, there s not much traffic, and I decide right in the middle of a main six lane road to do a U-turn right in the middle of the road. Roll the dice. YOLO. I do not want to hear about this for the rest of my life. I'm going

Speaker 2: to make it. I do a U-turn right in the middle of the road. I'm often

Speaker 1: flying to the other school. Pull into the parking lot. Run to the center. I'm here with the SAT. Nice woman sitting behind the counter says, okay, I just need your registration and ID.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have it.

Speaker 1: She said, well, I need your I can can look it up.

Speaker 2: I just need your driver's license. Did it

Speaker 1: it's it's really warm in here. What what did you need? What what what do you need? Driver's license? Oh, driver's license.

Speaker 2: The thing, the deal, I don't have it. She said, you don't

Speaker 1: have registration for the SAT test or your driver's license. I said, No, I don't. I'm the only one in the room, by the way.

Speaker 2: Everybody else is in the classroom waiting to take this life altering test. Okay. She said, What's your name? I said, Theodore Ingle. Ingle? I said, Yes. Said, Did brothers one of your brothers

Speaker 1: go to school here? I said, Yes. Of them two of them did. Oh, she said, I know who you are. Who are your parents? Anne and Ted Ingle. Oh, okay. Yeah. But, well, well, here. And she's looked now she finds my sheet. I'm the only one left. I'm the only little piece of paper in her little thing in front of her. She said, okay. Well, what's your address? I give her the address. She said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're fine. Just go on in. Here's the blood the the the booklet or whatever. And now I go sit in. And I feel horrible. I have not slept enough. I have not had anything to eat, anything to drink. I have not brushed my teeth. And now I'm sitting around all of these people, many of whom I know that I've gone to school with for many years, getting ready to take this test. I looked awful. I felt worse. And now I realize, oh, I don't have a pencil. This is back when you did these things, pardon me, with pencils on paper. It's a very nice young woman sitting in front of me who I've gone to school with for many years named Selena Smith. Tap her on the shoulder.

Speaker 2: I said, Selena, can I borrow a pencil?

Speaker 1: I will never forget the look that she gave me. Just disapproving judgment. Like, get your shit together, young man. What are you doing with your life? And she just kind of, and she very nicely hands me a number two pencil. Selena, if you're watching or listening to this, thank you very much for your decency and kindness. I'll try to

Speaker 2: pay it forward at some point. I'll get around to it. So I proceed to take the

Speaker 1: SAT. And I would think someplace on that first page, I'm not sure what question it was, it hit me. I don't know any of the answers because I believe they began with math. Math and I do not have a great relationship. And I know one of the big pieces of advice that you go in before you take the SAT is be sure if you do not know the answer, to leave the question blank.

Speaker 2: Don't guess. So you get punished more

Speaker 1: for a wrong answer than if you lay flat blank. Well, yeah, that wasn't gonna work for me. Because if I didn't fill out the quest questions, all of them, to the ones I didn't know, oh, I think that'd probably be a 90% blank. So as the test goes on, and my self esteem, morale, confidence continues just to slide all the way down further into the depths. It realized, I realized that all of those well meaning adults who told me I was going to do so well in this test. Yeah, they didn't know what they were talking about. I didn't know anything. Anything. Anything ever. And that really, the problem was, they weren't just being nice to me, is that they had talked to me. And when they had talked to me, they had talked to a young person who had grown up in a house full of adults. I'm the youngest of six kids. So that put seven other people in my house, all of whom were six and a half, five and a half years older than me. So I grew up with a far more adult sense of humor, way to speak, etcetera, than somebody my age. They all thought, oh, well, this is a really smart kid. I might have been. My grades were awful. I finished the SAT. Now this was back in

Speaker 2: the day when you do not get those scores immediately.

Speaker 1: I will never forget the day I did receive that, the SAT thing that came back. And I peeled open the piece of paper and I saw a number so low, I didn't think it was possible. This is a story, this is a detail that I don't think I will talk about, but I don't think I've ever really shared it because it's so embarrassing. So in the SAT back then, I don't know about now, the SAT back then, you were given 400 points if you filled out your name correctly. My full name was Theodore is Theodore McCray Ingle. That's a lot of letters. Okay? So this it's harder than it

Speaker 2: looks. So the test score says 700. You must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

Speaker 1: Do you know how bad that is? Now this is a scale of 1,600 back then.

Speaker 2: That means combined verbal math, I got 700. What?

Speaker 1: How is that even possible? Maybe it's a misprint. Maybe they forgot the one in front of the seven. Yeah, I don't think so. A few months later, my mom worried about my college prospects of not being able to get into some junior college says, we're gonna sign you up for an SAT prep class. Meets Saturday mornings at 08:00. Great. During my senior year, that's gonna

Speaker 2: be fun. So I

Speaker 1: get to the class. It started sometime in August or September, and I'm flanked by much smarter people in this room. Well, one of them for sure. And I think there were three or four of us. And the instructor says, okay, what's your test score? I just need to know what your test score was. And I write 700 math, 700 verbal. And the guy says, You got 1,400? I said, Yeah, that's what it said. So I'm very excited. He said, I don't think you should be in this class. So I run out to the room and I'm very excited. I'm like, Wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't have to do this. I did much better than I thought. I am. I am as smart as all those people were telling me. I call my mom, or pardon me, my dad answers the phone. And I said, dad, I think I got a 700 on both. And he laughs and he says, no, you got 700 on one. So I took the class. And that is my horror story about taking the SAT. And ultimately I took the ACT as well. I did much better on those second and third tries because I don't think I could have done any worse. More importantly, seeing that number, the first time I opened it was so humiliating and so embarrassing. It motivated me to actually try in high school. And by doing that, I went from a two point zero to a 3.8 in the matter of a semester, or pardon me, six week grading period of which I will never forget my high school guidance counselor, a woman I deeply love named Joan Carter Lewis, sends me a message to come see her in her office because she has seen the report card that goes from a two o kid to a three eight and a 3.8 GPA. And she said, this is great. I'm I'm really happy. I'm really proud

Speaker 2: of you. She said and

Speaker 1: I had a great relationship with her. I love that woman. She's such a great person. And she said, listen. Did you cheat on any of this stuff? And I said, no, said, I just I'm doing the work now. Little did I know. So now why is this relevant or why is this pertinent? Because I have a daughter now who is a very good student. And thank God she takes after her mother when it comes to academic skillset. However, she is not immune from the gene pool that I have given that poor child. She has taken the SAT one time and did it very, arrived on time, did very, very well. Then she took the SAT and did it, pardon me, ACT and did an even better job. Very proud of her. Good job, but she wants to get the score up so she can get into, you know, this school or that school because that's, that's a thing now. And, and she's capable of doing it. So now she has to take the ACT again. She has signed

Speaker 2: up for it another time to, to improve her score. It was a few days ago. She gets there and she doesn't have her ID.

Speaker 1: And unlike this time, they will not let her take it, even though I sent her a screenshot of her ID. And I thought, yeah. Okay. I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree on that one. Love you, honey. I'm sorry that I gave you that curse of having to duplicate your father's error.

Speaker 3: Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Well, join the Sunset Lounge DFW and Your Dark Companion on Patreon YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, and music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more.

Speaker 1: So enough about my academic career. Although I should point this out.

Speaker 2: Well, we're waiting.

Speaker 1: I went on to finish my undergraduate degree from Kansas in four years. I earned a master's degree in two years at TCU, and I did end up teaching college courses, undergrad and grad level courses at TCU and SMU both in the span of about, I don't know, eleven or twelve years. And I think if you had told me when I first saw that SAT score that I would go on to do all of that academically, I don't think I would have believed any of it. So the point is, when it comes to that test, it's not a life defining moment. For me, however, it was a kick in the ass that I really needed.

Speaker 3: In my book, we're going to be winners.

Speaker 1: Right. So moving on. Regarding 1989, I would have been a junior in high school and in the middle of very formative time in my love of sports, baseball, basketball, the NFL, all of it. I just loved it. That was my thing. One thing that I have noticed in the last however many years, specifically anchored around the explosion of media content that covers everything, is the narrative pointed at the current state of the NBA. And the reason why we are where we are when so much of the narrative and commentary is negative has happened for two reasons. Number one, the people who are commenting on the games are older. So I'm 52. So let's say they're 40 and up and, or they are former players whose careers were in the eighties, nineties, or first part of the twenty first century. And what happens when you get older and you consume whatever the same product today that existed back then when you were in your formative, consuming years is that you want everything to be the way it was. And if anything that you should have learned by now is that things constantly change and evolve. Maybe not always for the better, but they always change and evolve. And the way it was in 1985 doesn't necessarily mean that it was better that way. I loved the NBA as a kid. Specifically, I really fell in love with it when the Indiana Pacers started to turn a corner and started to win a lot of games. I was the random fan, the outlier fan who grew up in Indiana who did not like Larry Bird. Everybody in Indiana loved Larry Bird. And I will say as a fully formed adult, I think Larry is the greatest. But back then, I was a Pacers fan. The Pacers stunk. And the Boston Celtics were awesome. And I didn't like anybody who wasn't on the Indiana Pacers. Or not many of them. And that included Larry Bird. Again, as I got older, I really appreciated what a good guy and a hell of a player he was and certainly loved the fact when he was the coach of that team and led them to their only appearance, or pardon me, second, their first appearance in the NBA finals in 2000. But as I sit there and listen to people talk about the NBA, including Larry Bird, the overwhelming commentary is incredibly negative that the game is weak, that the players are soft, that they can't play, they don't guard anybody, this, that, and the other. Now there is one piece of commentary that I have heard this season louder than any other point, which I completely am on board with, which is tanking and teams deliberately trying to lose in order to secure a top pick in the two thousand and twenty six NBA draft is completely out of hand. That you have way too many teams deliberately trying to lose games, and that is not good for your product. If you can put that part aside and just focus on the game oh, and there's one other part that I totally agree with, by the way. Too many guys are taking nights off. There's way too many guys who are expect who we just expect now will not play 82 games. There's a couple re there's a reason for that, which I'll get into here in a second. But the commentary about teams trying to lose, completely foul valid and justified. You can't have that many teams deliberately trying to lose. You can't sell tickets to fans who are paying good money, a lot of money, to go watch a team where their team is mailing it in and is putting out a lineup that is offensive to effort. Okay. So that one I agree with. But the idea that somehow the game of basketball as it has evolved is any worse or somehow not as good as it was when Michael Jordan was playing or when Kevin Garnett was playing is nonsense. I go back to a podcast, to an interview. I don't think it was a podcast, but it was a discussion between Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. Those are the two guys who played in the era who fit the description that would say the game was better back in my day. Instead, they sat there and they both admitted the game is way better now. And their point was the three point shot has completely changed the spacing on the floor and the fact that you've got guy, you've got room now where guys can run around and flow. And if you watch a game today versus a game from 1986, they're correct. Now I am not a fan of 43 shots in a game. That that that I I think there's too much dead space and opportunity wasted in the middle of the floor. The reason is because one, guys love a three point shot because it's an easier shot because no one's going to get in your you're going have more space to take it. The other one too is all of the data says you are better off taking that three point shot than you are a mid range jumper. And data now completely runs strategy across just about every sport. And I don't know how they're gonna undo that one. But that, to me, that is a development that I don't that I just say is an unfortunate thing. But the idea that this game is not as good as it was in 1986, go on YouTube and watch a Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan game against the Indiana Pacers, the Washington Bullets. Those games are not that great. Now he was amazing. Don't get me wrong. Michael Jordan watching Michael Jordan are some of those players from that era kick ass is remarkable. But there were a lot of guys on that floor who had no business being on that floor, but they were there. And those guys would not be in this game today. The level of basketball ability, talent, skill is so much better today than it was in the mid eighties. It is. It it it is. And when you get a good game, that Oklahoma City Indiana Pacers NBA final series, that was a great series. The basketball is just a lot different. Guys bitching about defense, guys bitching about refs, that is generate that's going to happen. I don't care what era of any sport. People are gonna be doing that forever. But if you watch the good games, and I'm talking playoffs, etcetera, or good NBA regular season game, Those games today are better than they were back then from a talent level, from a skill level. One of the challenges that we have about why guys are taking nights off is that players of this era today, they are so much bigger. They're so much faster. They're so much more muscular. They are played they are trained now to play and excel in a game a week. They're not training for 82 games. Now they may be in condition to play 82 games, but the modern day athlete now is training to excel in bursts. So that's why you're seeing these guys get injured. Go look at some of these athletes playing in the NBA today. It is the gene pool lottery. Look how muscular they are. The NBA has placed a premium on low body fat. So you're seeing these very lean hyper athletic muscular guys running at full bore, 94 feet up, down, up, down, up, down. I don't care what you do. There's nothing that you can do that will make the tendon any stronger today than it was back then if you're asking that tendon to put up with that much punishment night after night after night. And the other problem too is guys now players now have all the leverage. They can

Speaker 2: take a night off. They just can. The teams are beholden to

Speaker 1: their talent and they'll just sit there and say, okay. Now you got a lot of professionals out there who don't do that. I I don't think we fully appreciate what LeBron James has done in the course of his Hall of Fame career. It's it's absolutely amazing what that man continues to do. The outlier's outlier. I mean, just remarkable to con to do what he has done at this level at his age, at the consistency. That's another part of it. It's the consistency of it. You'll find a lot of players who can do spectacular things in a game or two or three. They can't do it for 30. They can't do it for 40. So we're watching players now who can do things that those players from that era can't do anymore. And what you're gonna find is that people like me sit there and want it the way it was when we were younger, when we were kids, and we fell in love with it. So we bitch about it. So what the NBA doesn't really need to sit there and address is, well, how can we make the game better? The game is going to evolve. And what we have to do as as commentators or fans or whatever is sit there and appreciate what they can do. But here's our problem. If we sit there and appreciate what they do and say, this

Speaker 2: is great. This is great. This is great. You don't watch it. You don't listen to it. You don't read it. You don't stop on it while you scroll.

Speaker 1: As all of you guys are well aware, this media model

Speaker 2: rewards basically complaining, negativity.

Speaker 1: So if you want to last, you've got to be one of the guys who sits there and just machine guns complaints at the current state of the sport that you love. I had I was a guest on a podcast. This was a few years ago. And the person who hosted it said, a really nice person said, I sure hope, you know, you can write about the good things going on at this university and all that other stuff. And I said flat out, I said, I'm gonna stop you right there. I do. I have. You don't read it. I said, you just you you won't look at it unless the story is about somebody who has no legs and won the dunk contest, you're probably not gonna stop on it. You're far more likely to sit there and listen to the commentator, analyst, or former player sit there and call these guys out in bitch and moan and whine about whatever. So what are

Speaker 2: we supposed to do? I don't know.

Speaker 1: It really stinks because I do love basketball. I still play it. I'm terrible at it. I still love it. I love college basketball. I like the NBA. There's parts to the game that I don't love. Like I mentioned before, this whole tanking thing completely got out of hand, and it completely derailed the season, by the way. It's like nobody have has any idea who's in the top top in the East or the top in the West. All they're doing is talking about all of these teams that lost 55 games or more, which I believe the final tally was eight. That's an NBA record. That's a problem. The game is good. Do more players need to play 70 plus games? Absolutely. You need to make sure that ticket holder, the person who bought that ticket, and the reason they bought that ticket was see to see their superstar player. You've gotta figure out a way to get that guy on the floor because you're just running off your customers, and you don't wanna do that. The game is good. The skill level is extraordinary. The talent level is unbelievable when you watch what some of these guys can do now. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird used to be the outliers as six nine or six ten guys who could run the floor and dribble and pass. They're everywhere now. It's it's amazing to watch how good these guys are. The problem that we also have is the commentary around it is too damn negative. And unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to figure that one out.

Speaker 2: I guess when I saw the SAT score back the first time I took it, I should have seen that one coming. See you next time.

Speaker 3: This is a Stolen Water Media production.