It was NBA Playoffs season — the time of year in Northern California where all traces of rain dissipate, it’s a consistently warm ~80°, and high school cliques are beginning to form for the coming summer fun.
My older brother and I were in high school and he was having some friends over to watch the playoffs. He was entering his senior year and I my sophomore, and coupled with his strong affinities for hip-hop and getting in trouble, my older brother seemed infinitely cool to me.
So here I am, trying to be cool, trying to fit in with the cool older crowd, when Craig Sager comes on screen wearing a beautifully baby blue suit with a sheen suited perfectly for those arena lights.
“Hooooo. OK, Craig!” One of my brother’s friend’s says, grabbing the attention of the others who, are in agreement, that Craig Sager looks good and, by association, is cool.
Wait…what?
This guy? This old guy? The one with the extreme lack of color coordination and probable comb-over toupée…he’s cool?
No no. No no no no no.
The foundation of what I thought was cool had been decimated, and this feeling, this feeling I experienced right then and there, that this goofy old guy with the goofy suit is cool, is the reason for this blog post.
The cynic will look at Sager’s recent passing and begin to believe that, like many famous artists, Craig Sager’s life only began to matter to pop culture once it was known he would soon pass away. The cynic will read the headlines of Sager’s death and begin to believe the sports world is mourning the loss of a secondary, possibly even tertiary, character — a colorful clown who put the “sideshow” in “sideline” reporting. The tragedy of his impending death served as full compliment to the jester character he played on stage, thus fulfilling the theatre that is sport, and the ultimate reason why we mourn.
Fortunately, the cynic is wrong.
Although he lived a full life of sports reporting that included running onto the field to interview Hank Aaron after his milestone home run, the role of the wacky-suit-wearing reporter remembered most fondly by pop culture mattered — even before we knew it would soon be gone.
There’s something young people understand about fashion that older generations often forget: to be goofy is to be weird, but to dress goofy means you have style.
And style alone, independent of age, race, income, awful comb-over, etc., makes you cool.
We will miss you, Mr. Sager.
The Phree Press 