more importantly
what do you believe? and what …
what will you become

“To be able to tap into that source, that part of who you are that transcends thinking — that’s what I’m talking about. We’ve all done it; we’ve all seen it.
Faith is belief without proof. Something deeper than your own thoughts. Giving your all, win, lose, or draw—that takes some version of faith, whatever that means to you. And sometimes that faith is the only way you’re going to win that game, or the only way you’re going to get that contract. It’s the only way to reach a new level of excellence.
So I ask you: What is your big dream?
More importantly, what do you believe? And what will you become?”

Excerpt From Stay Sane in an Insane World: How to Control the Controllables and Thrive
by Greg Harden.

Greg Harden was known as Michigan’s Secret Weapon.

According to Wikipeda, Assoc Athletic Director Harden was best known for his work with 7-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady. He also worked with Heisman Trophy winner and Super Bowl MVP Desmond Howard, and 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps. Brady, Howard, and other athletes credit Harden with inspiring them to overcome obstacles and achieve success in their professional and personal lives.

Harden began work as a student-athlete counselor in 1986 when Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler brought him in after hearing of the work Harden was doing in Ypsilanti, helping people deal with the challenges of everyday life and work. In the years since, Harden has been named associate Athletic Director and Director of Athletic Counseling for the University of Michigan Athletic Department.

Sorry to say that Dr. Harden died a year ago.

Seems like his role and importance in that athletic program, was somehow, greatly underestimated.

When I was a student, I had one Art History Professor who could not resist a Monday morning comment about that weekends game.

One week he approached the lectern and popped open a can of Coke and took a big swig, then said in a VERY HOARSE voice … “I mean really … 72 points.”

Then Michigan lost to that team down south.

This Professor stood at his lectern that next Monday and stared out at us a while then said, “It is good to remember there are all just kids like you.”

So I ask you: What is your big dream?

More importantly, what do you believe? And what will you become?”

And always remember, Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

naw, he said, now what
would I want to remember …
a thing like that for?

In 1966, George Plimpton wrote a book titled Paper Lion as an inside view of pro football by going through the pre-season with the Detroit Lions.

He came out with a follow up book in 1973 titled Mad Ducks and Bears that told the story of the years after 1966 through Plimpton’s friendship and interviews with Detroit Lions Alex Karras (The Mad Duck) and John Gordy (The Bear).

In Mad Ducks and Bears, Plimpton writes about what it was like for Karras and Gordy to play with Quarterback Booby Layne who both men acknowledged was a masterful football player but a pretty nasty guy otherwise.

Both men carried long grudges against Layne that lasted through their careers.

Plimpton relates this story told by Alex Karras, writing:

The two of them sat quietly, thinking back on those days. Finally Karras said, “You know something crazy? Bobby Layne was traded away by Detroit to the Pittsburgh Steelers. He ended up his career there. We played them one Sunday, and this play came up where he was chased out of the pocket and ran out of bounds. I was chasing him, really reaching for him, and when we got out of bounds I still went for him. I racked his ass. Back behind the bench somewhere. Knocked a water bucket over, I remember. I don’t know why I did it. It was crazy. We got a big penalty and I was chewed out plenty.”

“What about Layne?” I asked.

“I can remember him looking at me out of that crazy helmet he wore. ‘Hey, what did you do that for?’ he says. “I couldn’t have told him. No way.”

Later in the book, Plimpton recounts how he had the chance to meet Bobby Layne, spend some time with him and interview him.

Plimpton writes:

“Bobby,” I asked, “do you remember a game when you were playing for Pittsburgh in which you were run out of bounds, and Alex Karras came out of nowhere and really belted you one? They damn near threw him out of the game for it? A water bucket went over. It was way out of bounds. Do you remember that?”

Layne was silent for such a long time that I thought he had his mind on something else and had not heard the question.

“Naw,” he said finally. He reached for the door handle of the jeep.

“Naw, now what would I want to remember a thing like that for?”

Folks, the next time someone suggests that the Lions’ wear throwback uniforms, throwback to those great Lions’ teams, throwback to those great Lions’ games, throwback to those great Lions’ memories that we all say:

“Naw, now what would I want to remember a thing like that for?”

but beating the team
that you hate the most? That lasts
the rest of your life

It’s also college football in a nutshell, and it’s worth keeping in mind as we enter Rivalry Week: In the end, what makes this sport so deliriously wonderful is this sort of irrational emotion, this primal and eternal bile. We have become accustomed, already, just in the second year of the 12-team Playoff, to gauging every week’s results by how they affect the ever-shifting CFP bracket picture, and we’re fully primed to do that again this week. 

But the thing about those games is that, in the long term, what they mean for Playoff positioning will be the least interesting thing about them. What matters is beating those other guys’ brains in. What matters is getting to talk trash all year.

This would seem like an obvious thing to say — college football is about tradition and rivalries — but it is one that, because of college football’s wild changes over the past few years, needs to be repeated and, perhaps more than anything else, cherished.

But beating the team you hate the most? That lasts the rest of your life.

From the New York Time article, College Football Playoff bids are great. Making your rival miserable is still better by Will Leitch.

Of last year, Mr. Leitch wrote:

Maybe Ohio State beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame to win the national title last year. But it didn’t beat Michigan, which means a huge chunk of its glorious season was a complete and total failure. That is hilarious. It is also kind of wonderful — and one of the best reasons to love this deranged sport.

I was born and raised in a Michigan family.

My first big sports hero I remember was Michigan basketball start, Cazzie Russel.

And the first big sports memory was that Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1969 when Michigan beat an Ohio State team that hadn’t lost in 2 years.

I like to say that when I was a kid I was told that Woody Hayes was under my bed if I got out, he would grab me and take me off to Ohio.

Reading biographies as a kid I had to wrestle with the fact that General Grant, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers and James Thurber all were born in Ohio.

It didn’t make any sense.

Until I figured it out that none of them achieved much success until they LEFT Ohio.

Mr. Leitch quotes William Hazlitt called “On the Pleasure of Hating.”

Mr. Hazlitt once wrote, back in 1826:

Nature seems made of antipathies.

Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action.

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit.

Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits.

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust:

Hatred alone is immortal.

With that in mind, I am thankful this Thanksgiving for something so worthy of my hate.

I live in a seaside resort community that oddly enough has a large Ohio contingent.

Up the coast a bit in Charleston, SC, then even have a MEME of GBTO or Go Back to Ohio.

Its kind of goofy but when the concept arose back in the late 1970’s that timeshare vacations were invented, the fellers in charge took a map and estimated the furthest a father might drive their family and their research led them to focus their marketing efforts on the state of Ohio.

And it worked!

But as one local blogger put it … Tourism is the bread and butter of the lcoal economy, but Ohio’s arrival seems like adding five extra sticks of butter. Sure, we’re richer for it, but at what cost?

Anyway, what this means it that this is a great place to wear an M coaches cap.

And when I say coaches cap, I mean what is now called the ‘SKINNY M’ coaches cap.

It is great fun to walk the beaches and parks and hear from all sides folks yell out GO BLUE.

Especially … ESPECIALLY when there some of those OH IO people around.

You know them.

The group that needs two people to spell O H I O.

BTW, having worked in the world on Online News for 20 years, I was always happy to report that any story on Ohio State Football had twice as many reads as any other sports story.

There was the Ohio State Fan … and the person who read the story to them.

But I digress.

And down here.

They see me.

They see my cap.

My T shirt.

My sweat shirt.

My swim trunks.

They see the M.

And I see them.

And all I have to do is smile.

And they know it.

I’ve got the best seat
put my hands up when he was
seven yards down field

Jahmyr Gibbs rescues Lions with long TD run in OT for 34-27 win over Giants by Larry Lage
DETROIT (AP) — Jahmyr Gibbs to the rescue.
Gibbs ran for a 69-yard touchdown on the first snap of overtime and had a career-high 264 yards from scrimmage along with three scores, lifting the Detroit Lions to a much-needed 34-27 win over the New York Giants on Sunday.
“He bailed us out in a big way,” Detroit coach Dan Campbell
Detroit took advantage. With 28 seconds left, Jake Bates kicked a career-long 59-yard field goal that matched a franchise record, giving Jared Goff another opportunity to put the ball in Gibbs’ hands.
In overtime, Goff handed the ball to Gibbs for a run up the middle, Detroit’s much-maligned offensive line opened a huge hole, and one of the NFL’s fastest players took it from there.
“I’ve got the best seat in the field,” Goff said. “I put my hands up when he was about seven yards down the field.”

Kind of like wanting to see an overtime basketball game where one team comes out of nowhere and scores 20 points, I love it when you see something unexpected in OT.

Like a 70 yard run from scrimmage on the 1st play.

Especially when its my team.

I think I saw Goff with his hands up calling touchdown a few seconds after the handoff.

That was fun.

Back in 1996, Brian Griese took over after halftime of the Ohio State game down 0 to 9 and on the 2nd play of the 2nd half, from the Michigan 20, Griese threw an in route to Tai Streets at about the 30 yard line.

The OSU defender fell down and Streets took two more steps and calling the game for ABC Sports, Keith Jackson said, simply, “he’s wide open and gone for a touchdown.”

At that point, Streets was at the 50 yard line but Jackson had seen enough football in his life that unless there was an earthquake and some 200 foot ravine suddenly opened up, Streets was going to score.

50 yards of watching your team, knowing its a touchdown.

Jackson, unlike most sportscasters, shut up and let everyone live in that moment as Streets ran down the middle of the field to the endzone.

And for some reason, no one said, AND NO FLAGS.

Maybe back then, just because they had flags those guys didn’t think they needed to call a penalty on every play.

That was fun …

Who knows this weekend …

when no leadership
there are no rules, no rules there
are no boundaries

When I was a kid there were college athletic conferences that were set up regionally across America.

They had to be regional as the teams would travel to wherever the colleges were located for games.

In the early part of a college football season, you might see a team from up north play a team from down south or out west but once the season got underway, the focus was on your team and your conference and those other teams in your conference.

At the end of the season, the best teams were invited to holiday bowl games that were the highpoint of local festivals.

And when it was all over, sports writers would get together and select a mythical best team in the nation or ‘National Champion’.

This provided the fans with a chance to argue out the selection the entire off season.

This allowed fans to exult or complain.

This allowed for some really great football in the late fall.

But the grown ups got involved.

The idea of a mythical national champion was horrific to some folks when it was so obvious that it could all be settled on the field.

It worked for the NFL.

With its 32 teams, 2 conferences, and its 4 divisions and set schedule.

And it worked for state high school playoffs with, in the state of Michigan, its 8 classes, and 8 divisions (and the fact that schools started playing a week before labor day so a nine game schedule and 5 game playoff led to championship games on Thanksgiving weekend).

So why not college?

Why not?

The plan that worked in the NFL and in High School would only work if the existing college platform was blown up.

But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.

So why let’s just have the final top two teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?

But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.

So why let’s just have the final top four teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?

But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.

So why let’s just have the final top twelve teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?

Okay lets try this, how do you select that top 12?

That’s were we are.

And this is what sports writer, Matt Hayes wrote in his USA Today Article, It’s blowout city in mid-November. And I blame the CFP anarchy:

“... because no one knows what in the world the College Football Playoff selection committee wants. Or how it works. Or what it takes to earn one of the coveted seven at-large spots in the 12-team field.

The committee chairman (whoever it is this week) says things like strength of schedule, game control, efficiency, net rate success and any of the many other nonsensical metric garbage it feeds the breathless looking for answers.

The whole point of this selection committee exercise was to eliminate decades-old crutches used to pick the national champion, or the teams who play for the national championship.

Yet here we are, stuck in the past, with the same tired process shrouded in something called game control. And net YPP (yards per play).

And any other nonsense they can shovel at us to avoid admitting there’s no leadership. No rules, no boundaries.

And apparently, no need for the head-to-head metric. Or the one metric that should be used, but isn’t: Who have you beaten?

With one week to go in the season and teams fighting to for their win lost records we got watch games that included:

Georgia 35, Charlotte 3
Texas A&M 48, Samford 0
Alabama 56, Eastern Illinois 0
Auburn 62, Mercer 17
South Carolina 51, Coastal Carolina 7

Oh boy!

Did anybody ask if the fans would like it?

I am told I am old or older and not with it with what the young football fan’s want.

Did they enjoy this weekend?

Do they enjoy an endless chatter of talking heads offering up as many opinions as any political talking head offers up about the current state of affairs.

Do they enjoy the clouds of data and numbers thrown up in a gray fog.

This has all made the sport MORE enjoyable, watchable, embraceable by the fan?

I am reminded of the quote of General Patton in the movie where the actor George C. Scott says the line, “God, how I hate the 20th century.”

I am also reminded of an old quote about Little League Baseball attributed to Hall of Fame Pticher and Manager, Bob Lemon, when he said, Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.