It just wasn’t what college life was supposed to be like. I talk to all these other guys, they talk about their schools all the time, how much fun they had, but the only fun we had pretty much was on Saturdays or Friday nights. That was game day. Other than that, it was a tough place to go to school. – Jim McMahon
Jim McMahon is 55 years old. It’s been three decades since he left college. And yet he can’t get over it.
BYU, that is.
He’s still complaining about his alma mater.
What might have played well to a certain crowd when he was in his 20s doesn’t play so well in his 50s.
It used to pass as hip and rebellious; now it just sounds tired and worn out, if not ungracious and immature for a middle-aged man.
It’s as if he learned one joke 30 years ago and is still telling it.
There he was again dissing BYU in an interview with Chris Boden of Comcast's "SportsNet" earlier this month: “It just wasn’t what college life was supposed to be like,” McMahon said. "I talk to all these other guys, they talk about their schools all the time, how much fun they had, but the only fun we had pretty much was on Saturdays or Friday nights. That was game day. Other than that, it was a tough place to go to school.”
Which is pretty much verbatim what he said during a 2011 interview with 560 WQAM in Miami. “When you go to college,” he said, “you’re supposed to have fun, and that’s not the place to have fun.”
Don’t you just want to tell him enough already?
How classy is it to still be complaining about a university — any university — after all these years, especially one that provided the perfect forum (an offense) for him to demonstrate his skills (throwing a football) like no other school in the country at the time, with the perfect head coach (LaVell Edwards — imagine McMahon getting along with Bronco Mendenhall) and the perfect coordinator (Doug Scovil), all of which enabled him to be an NFL first-round pick and go on to earn millions in salary and endorsements and give him a life that, by all appearances, consists of golf, owning a few restaurants, more golf and suing the NFL.
What is this guy complaining about 30 years later? That he wasn’t able to toss back a few more beers? That he missed frat parties?
Only nine months ago McMahon was invited to BYU for a weekend in his honor. The school inducted him into its Hall of Fame and retired his jersey. It was long overdue, but entirely McMahon’s fault. To be enshrined in the Hall, McMahon had to graduate, a little detail he had skipped. To graduate, he needed and received considerable encouragement and support from BYU and especially athletic director Tom Holmoe.
Despite all his whining about BYU over the years, McMahon received a sustained standing ovation from 60,000 fans in Cougar Stadium. About one-third of the fans wore his No. 9 jersey, many of whom hadn’t been born when he played football. A banner with McMahon’s name and number was unveiled in the stadium. BYU officials heaped praise on the old quarterback. It was a McMahon lovefest.
And now he’s resumed the old gripes about BYU? It began in the ‘80s and has continued ever since. He said in his biography that happiness was seeing Provo in the rearview mirror. He grumbled that BYU didn’t campaign enough for him as a Heisman candidate.
In 1986, he told the Chicago Tribune that leaving BYU was like getting out of prison (he also said he would never return to the school to finish his degree). “It’s not the easiest place to get an education when they’re playing mind games with you all the time,” he told the Chicago Tribune, referring to attempts by BYU officials to get him to live up to the Honor Code he had signed.
To harbor such resentment about his college life at the age of 55 seems a little odd, no?
Apparently, he did not understand what the Honor Code and BYU stood for. Maybe the Cougars kept it a secret. Or maybe they pointed a gun at his head and forced him to play there.
McMahon has stated that he went to BYU only to play football. So why is he complaining about his social life there?
Well, this has always been McMahon’s M.O. He’s been pushing back against authority figures for decades, whether it was BYU officials, Mike Ditka, Pete Rozelle (remember when he wore the silly headbands to taunt the commissioner?), the media (remember when he mooned the helicopter during a Super Bowl practice?).
If McMahon didn’t have BYU, he’d have to invent a BYU or some equivalent target (fortunately, he now has the NFL). Meanwhile, his alma mater gives him nothing but love. "This is his place," said Holmoe during the school’s Hall of Fame weekend. “He belongs here. I just told him that he'll be part of this family forever."
Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: drob@deseretnews.com