Sportsmanship and NCAA Divisoin I Football

I'm so sick of reading how classless Urban Meyer is for finishing a drive with a touchdown with 28 seconds remaining that punctuates a 42-20 spanking of the highly favored Oregon Ducks in the 2014 national championship game.

So for full disclosure I was cheering for the Ducks in the game. I also believe Urban Meyer is the best coach in all of college football.  Way way beyond that I don't see much of that "classy" sportsmanship anywhere in the ranks of college football you all are crying about not getting in this game.

I ask you.  In the 59-0 whipping Alabama laid on Texas A and M - which was the touchdown they should have taken a knee for?  In this game Alabama has 2 quarterbacks with at least 8 pass attempts and a touchdown.  They also had 4 with at least 8 rushes and no back had more than 13 carries.  They didn't score with 28 seconds remaining, but if you want to be classy and show good sportsmanship - at what point do you stop scoring?  They scored twice in the second half - that's it.  On which should they have taken a knee?

Let's not just allow Texas A and M to be the whipping boy here though.  They laid their own 73-6 beat down on Lamar.  First of all - who is Lamar and why were they playing A and M?  Second they go to the 4th quarter with a 45-3 lead and proceed to lay down 4 more touchdowns including a 41 yard run with 1:26 remaining.  Shouldn't he have taken a knee at the goal line to show some class?  I mean - they don't need the score to secure the win.  Sincerely they could have taken a knee on every 4th quarter down and done more to embarrass their opponent - don't you think?

Would you like to follow a thread?  The week after getting laid out by Texas A and M the Lamar Cardinals go on to beat Texas College (??) 73-0.  I can't even find a box score for that game, but they won by 73 so the question remains.... On which of their touchdowns should they have taken a knee?

Maybe we shouldn't talk about the blowouts then.  How about Ole Miss playing Memphis.  They won the game 24-3.  So with 1:18 remaining, and already a 2 score lead - they shouldn't have thrown a touchdown pass to give them the 21 point lead.  Right?

With scores like 70-6, 82-27, 73-0 it's hard to believe Meyer is getting so much hate for scoring a touchdown that gives a 22 point lead with 28 seconds to play. Yes - he could have taken a knee and shown some class.  That just doesn't look to me like the culture of  NCAA Division I football. If he's working in that culture, and blowouts are regularly accepted, why the hate for the best coach in college football?

Come from Contribution

Gratitude is king.

Seriously - being thankful and showing thankfulness and gratitude are what will move you forward in this world.

Doing for others rather than being done for.

You'll find in this world the more you offer other people the more you get in return.  Believe it or not what you get in return isn't always just a warm fuzzy that you did something nice for someone.

I'm not trying to say if you go around doing good deeds all day, and nothing else, that you're going to have your wildest dreams come true.  If that's how you spend your days the warm fuzzy is likely all you're going to get - or perhaps someone will buy you lunch.

What am I talking about then?

The other day I was trying to grasp the concept of gratitude shown by those who are widely recognized as being wildly successful at what they did.  It's going to sound strange, but I watched the Hall of Fame Induction speeches by Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin.  I'm going to concentrate on Emmitt even though Irvin's speech might be one of the all time great speeches in my book.

If you know of Emmitt Smith you know he retired as the leading rusher in NFL History.  You might wonder why I would use him as an example of real gratitude.  Watch the speech.

Emmitt said in his speech that at 6 years old he declared he was going to play in the NFL.  I think it was in college he decided he was going to be the NFL Leading Rusher.  He wasn't ashamed to say he set goals people laughed at when he told them.  He wasn't ashamed to say he worked hard to achieve them either - they would never have been possible without the hard work.

Here's what else he did.  He recognized the quarterback (Troy Aikman) and primary received (Michael Irvin) and tight end (Jay Novacek) and stated flat out that his achievements wouldn't have been possible without them.

Then he named the linemen who were on those great Cowboy teams.  It might be normal for a running back to name the recognizable names from the line.  Emmitt named them all.  While never a Cowboy fan I was a huge Emmitt Smith fan, and closely followed the NFL during the years he played.  He named linemen I had never heard of.  He had them stand and thanked each of them personally and by name - recognizing that without them he would have been tackled in the backfield and his accomplishments would have been impossible.

Then individually he thanked his fullback.  Darryl "Moose" Johnston.  He got very emotional in this one.  Thanked him for watching out for him on the field like he was looking out for his little brother.  If you remember those teams it's true.  Moose never put up stats that got noticed by anybody - he made the pro bowl a few times - but every game he was there.  Leading the way and moving people out of the way.  Truly Emmitt would not have the records he has without Moose and he made sure during his speech the world new it.

Showing gratitude after the fact isn't all there is.  It's not all Emmitt did either - not the only way he showed gratitude.  The other way was while they were playing.  Now - there were stories back then of running backs buying dinner for their linemen - or watches at Christmas.  Emmitt did one thing better than nearly every other player during his era. He showed up to work every single day.  He did his conditioning, and his strength training and he showed up like he owed it to every other player on the field.  Emmitt played hurt like few others, and perhaps none since.  The quintessential tough guy on the field - playing with injuries often during the playoffs.  He was a workhorse and everybody knew it.

See - his teammates worked hard because they knew he was working hard.  He worked hard because he knew they worked hard.  He showed up  - hurt or not - and played like the world was going to end if he didn't because he knew those other guys were doing the same for him.

Sometimes showing gratitude it more work than you thought it was going to be.  By showing it to them he got it from them and the more he got from them the more he felt he owed them.  For the Dallas Cowboys of the early 90's it was a cycle and because of that cycle they won more football games than any other team in that decade.  Because of that cycle they have good number of guys in the hall of fame (Smith, Aikman, Irvin, Johnston, and a handful of those linemen - plus Novacek seems a matter of time before he's there as well).

Smith didn't downplay is own role - he put in the work on and off the field.  He set the goals and did the work to make them happen.  Along the way he simply acknowledged that he could not accomplish those goals on his own.

Gratitude - maybe not what you pictured?

The Future of Me

I'm taking this class.  The class is called BOLD and it's through Keller Williams MAPS Coaching.

BOLD stands for Business Objectives, a Life by Design.

There was an exercise yesterday that really got me attention.  The exercise might be something you've done before.  The participants sit quietly with their eyes closed while the leader guides them through creating this vision.  So I'm going to walk you through - of course your eyes will be open because you're reading.

(More than the exact words used by the instructor I'm relaying this through my own experience of the exercise.)

Sitting with your eyes closed.  Breathing in and out quietly and slowly.  

You're walking on an old dirt road. The road is lined with trees and the trees narrow with the road.  It increasingly becomes more narrow and overgrown into little more than a walking path through this woods.  Then  the space opens a bit more. It's obvious this used to be a road, but having overgrown sufficiently enough there's no place for vehicles here anymore. 

As I walk I see a figure in the distance. (In the exercise this figure is me 40 years in the future).  I didn't meet an older me.  As I approached I noticed it was my grandpa.  During the exercise we didn't talk.  We didn't discuss what was going on now or what would happen in the future. I simply saw him working.  As I walked he continued to work - just as he had always done.

You have to know.  My grandpa was 70 years old when I was born.  He worked until he was 77.  I lived directly across the street from grandpa and remember the day that car was there.  He never had visitors who weren't family.  There was one guy - an old blind guy who came with his cane and spittoon.  We never went over if grandpa had visitors.  The day that car was parked there I ran over as soon as it was gone...I found a sad old man who had just been told he needed to retire.  What's a man worth if he can't work he said to me.

Back to my vision.  My path was the lined with people I knew.  All working.  My parents. My maternal grandparents.  Everybody just working.  Not sure any of them ever did me a favor along the way.  I would mow their lawns - all of them - and would sometimes take a break in the middle.  Seriously?  They allowed me to do that?  The work was an hour tops for a kid who didn't walk fast, and I took a break in the middle.  

Now as a 40 year old man I am sitting in a classroom for an exercise and all I see is them working.  Working hard. Working with their hands.  That was their example to me. That was just what they did. All of them. They didn't work out of need - they didn't need because they worked.  They didn't work to prove anything to anybody - their work proved them.

As a very self critical guy who analyzes and over analyzes almost every move I make I wonder.  Am I destroying their legacy when I lay in bed an extra half hour in the morning?  If I decide I'll do that tomorrow? Doesn't tomorrow bring enough of its own work that today's needs to be done right now?

When Friends Die

I wrote a while back about how I hate funerals.  I wrote it after attending a funeral I really felt I needed to attend, having skipped a few I should have attended.  

There's another thing I'm not fond of, and once again failed miserably.  It's visiting in the hospital.  I can do it right? I can do anything I want.  I have done it and that proves I can.  When it's someone you haven't seen in years, and maybe weren't super close to but still called friend, it's not something you should skip.

The problem with NOT visiting at the hospital is missing that chance.  So Roy had been in and out of the hospital and even a couple of nursing homes over the past couple of years.  His health hadn't been good for a while and so this last trip to the hospital everybody had to know there was a chance it would be his last. I didn't go, and now I can't.

Please don't think my callous when I say I won't be losing sleep.  I hadn't seen him in probably at least 3 years and he knew what I thought of him.  Sometimes it's good to leave things like that.  You don't always need a final farewell, or to be there when someone actually goes.  I wasn't ever really close to him or his family and I'm comfortable with how things were the last time we saw each other.  They'll be better the next time we see each other.

Here's the thing, and the reason for this.  Roy was a guy who would do anything he could for almost anybody.  He was one of a handful of people who helped me move the last time I moved.  That was a bit more than 6 years ago.  Matter of fact- he called so early that morning wondering when we were going to start that he woke me up. 

If nothing else at all he was enthusiastic and tried hard.  Is there really anything more you can ask of anybody?  

So, Roy.  Sleep well.  Your heaven is the Montana mountains and rivers of your youth.  You talked of them like you were still there every weekend, may you find them just as you left them.  Not sure if heaven had a choir without a leader but I'm sure it's ok if you simply sit back and enjoy the music...not like that's your style.

Customer Loyalty Died

My cell phone carrier is T-Mobile. This post is about how to lose a customer. Every 22 months T-Mobile offers what they call a "full discount" on a new phone. To get the full discount you simply have to agree to a new 2 year contract. I called in October to make some changes and see about a new phone. I ended up with a couple of changes, a discount equal to about a month of service and no new phone. I also ended the conversation with a new 2 year contract and my full discount still intact and ready to use when I want. Now if a full discount requires a new contract, and I update the contract without utilizing the discount, I should be able to get a new phone at any time without a contract extension, right? I mean I already did that part. NO! If you do a new contract and don't use the discount at that time you will AGAIN be required to extend the contract in order to utilize the discount. What sort of BS is that? First a new customer already gets a better deal on everything and then a customer who has been loyal for ten years gets hosed. The moral to the story? NEVER extend a contract with a phone company. You can take your number with you, so take it and your money from one to the next until they reward loyalty over new business. This will never happen so travel the companies and shop them hard. Play them against each other. I left Qwest about ten years ago for t-mobile because the qwest guy was like "if cheap minutes are all you care about go ahead"...now I care about other things yet I was duped into a worthless contract extension just 2 months ago and it's almost worth paying full price for a new phone to ensure I done spend another day with t-mobile than I have to.

Missing It?

We travel this earth every day of our lives.  From the day we're born until the day we die we learn, we live, learn to live and live to love.  Or something like that.

We begin by learning to crawl, then walk and finally run. Somewhere along the way we also learn to laugh, talk and some of us learn to sing.

Somewhere along the way we accept that what we are learning, or what we've learned, is actually real.  We learn numbers, letters, words and math.  We learn how to spell and never give a thought that the rest of the world spells the words the same way.  We write, we read and we speak - taking for granted as children that our communications will be widely understood. We never give thought, and we might be missing it.

We might be missing the opportunity to skip rather than walk or run.  Perhaps the sight of a grown adult crawling through the aisles of the grocery store seems too much to take, society doesn't exactly encourage us to be different.

If only more people invented the words they were using, as they speak, we could be confused about something worth being confused about. Imagine how difficult communication would be if we couldn't discern when a person we're talking to needs to use the toilet, and we keep them standing in front of us trying to understand.

We take our world very seriously, perhaps too seriously. Maybe we shouldn't go crawling through the aisles at the store, or invent our words as we speak, if we take it too seriously we might be missing it.

Found

I found an old journal from a communications class I took back around 2002.  I think I'm going to post some of the entries - for my own liking if nothing else.  I'm not sure exactly how I want to go about them so I think I'll make a label or group or however it works to keep them all in the same place.

Keep in mind they're my thoughts from 10 years ago, but you might realize my way of thinking doesn't change much.  I kind of liked reading through them and hope you will too.  If you don't it's ok - move on.
If you like something leave a comment.

I have a lot of random thoughts.  Some of them mean something and some don't.  I'm not sure if I'm safer to write them down this way or say them out loud - no difference maybe.  Tendency with me is if it runs through my brain it comes out my mouth. Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's not.

Just the same keep your eyes open for the random thoughts of a casual observer and partaker of life. If you're sitting you ain't living.