Author: admin

I stumbled across The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and realized that my finding that book was no accident. I think I’ve been looking for it for a while; struggling to figure out why, despite having a large home, I never have room for anything. That question was answered straight away: I keep a great deal of stuff I don’t need.

I started cutting back on clutter this summer, hoping to affect my kids in some way. I’ve become increasingly aware of this responsibility I have as a father to set a good example for the boys around me and to be a really good person so that they know what being good looks like and hopefully make the decision to be good as well. This choice is more about keeping only what we need and gaining a better appreciation of what we have in the process. We do in fact have a lot of extraneous junk. I’m talking straight up trash–old pieces of leftover paper from cutouts and letters from stick on letter packs that were never used. This is solely the hall closet, mind you. I have a lot more to dig through before I hit the gold mine of stuff to get rid of.

It ought to take us a few weeks to really pare down, but this is the right way to go.

I’ve posted a lot of words this year about youth football and how I’ve felt about the season thus far. I go back and forth about my motives here. It is hard to get a real sense of what is brewing beneath all of the personal disappointment and confusion I feel about how my own children are being utilized on the team. I am used to watching my boys be team MVP candidates and, at the very least, be in the conversation for playing time. It is a hard shot to go from that to hoping my kids get in the game for at least five plays over the span of two hours. Still, as I continue to unpack the way I was feeling and process everything I watch go down in practice and on the field, I am closer to recognizing the real issue at play here: I am noticing a groundswell around youth football in the way it is played and reacted to. We are quickly taking sides for or against a sport that isn’t going away and in that we are losing sight of and ability to control the real issue at play here, which is how do we make this sport we love more safe for the people we love who are playing it?

I read an article on Grantland about the recent death of High School player Evan Murray that stated, “American football is the great, gravitational force at the center of the universe in which our spectacle sports operate. It is fine to operate from the moral high ground, but the fact remains that the existential crisis of physical destruction in American football is an existential crisis at the heart of American sports.” There is truth in those words and truth in the idea that, perhaps, we shouldn’t let our kids play this sport. Well, I prefer they play the sport now and develop the fundamentals for safety instead of being thrust into it at an age and a style of coaching more concerned with wins (and thus job security) than the safety of the kids. It is a slippery slope at all levels. Coaches and players and parents want wins. We want to cheer the big hits and in fact do cheer the hits that end with a player being carted off the field. As a result, we lean on the players and plays that get the wins and the big cheers.

Ostensibly, my son is not being given the chance to do what he is good at, which is utilize his speed, because he hasn’t shown that toughness to go out there and tackle the way some of the other kids do. I get it. When I played the first thing the coaches did was throw me, a raw walk-on, onto special teams and demand that I lay out to bring down the returner. What my boys’ coach did was to throw my eldest on the offensive line and tell him to block boys who are, at the lightest, twenty pounds heavier than his 68 lb frame. It is worse in practice where he lines up against kids who are anywhere from 120 to 187lbs and is expected to hold them back for ten seconds. That is when he isn’t lined up against his 65 lb little brother in one on one drills, which is a whole different set of issues a father can only hope he doesn’t have to deal with (fortunately, I turned it around so they war on the field and not in the living room).

I will continue to unpack this and continue to search for understanding. I know this: I am spending a great deal of mental energy thinking about coaching and I’m not actually coaching right now. That seems like a waste of psychological resources.

 

 

I’m off the pine, as I shared previously. I have that first sweet taste of W and want more. Now, having a timing issue continues to present a problem–I wanted to pick up Vick a week ago just in case and wanted to drop Matthews because I felt I had a need elsewhere (Hankerson) and could stream him in a week. None of that wound up being true, but the win came true and I’m grateful.

Now comes the plan to find more. I think that plan is based around my running game. I have Bell and Forte in there now and hopefully I’ll be able to stream a back later in the bye weeks. The WR situation is less than desirable with Cruz pulled from practice yet again. That dude is as soft as Derrick Rose these days (yep, injured again!)

My picks are decent. I’ll post the running total next week. For this week, pay close attention to what lies below…

PIT over BAL
Vick isn’t the 2004 Madden 99 he once was, but the dude can ball. He does best these days with weapons around him. He has that in spades. PIT in a rout.

NYJ over MIA
J-E-T-S! There is a lot of anger over letting the Eagles off the hook. Expect no let down from that D this week and expect even less running down hill from the Dolphins.

ATL over HOU
The Falcons are rolling and will continue to do so for several weeks. Its a strong playoff look for a team that was supposed to rock last year and sucked for lack of a better receiver. By better I mean Julio was hurt.

NYG over BUF
Giants 2-2. This is a must win for both teams in a sense, but I feel like the G-men want and need it more. There are fine things happening in Gotham, including a defense that is overlooked but still very successful…

OAK over CHI
Raider nation rejoice! Without the Cutlet’s dad, the Bears are not going to be a problem.

CIN over KC
I give this one to Cincy in my close pick of the week. Both offenses are moving in the right direction, but without a consistent ability to throw the ball downfield to receivers, this game belongs to cincy–a team that can

IND over JAX
Finally, a schedule that allows for some wins. Didn’t feel that way at all the first few…

CAR over TB
Cam…whoa, Cam!

PHI over WAS
The Eagles are gaining confidence and Cousins is losing it. I se a few picks here bringing on the bboo birds.

SD over CLE
ARI over STL
DEN over MIN
GB over SF
NO over DAL

SEA over DET
My last discussable pick is about a monday night showdown sans Marshawn Lynch. He ain’t about that Monday Night action and it will show in the run and short pass game… Still a lot that needs to be figured out in Seattle.

My boys go to a school that wound up on the news tonight. The story was about how the Charter school CEO came down to the high school and fired the principal and VP on the spot. The reality of what happened is somewhat different. Both P and VP are out and the CEO did come down there and handle it personally–handled it badly I might add. Still, beyond that lies a lot of media spin and the anger of parents and teachers who, though badly mishandling the situation, have every right to be mad.

My boys are in the k-8 side of the school. The pair that go there have never known another k-8 school. Now at least one of the boys seems to be on the verge of losing his teacher to this situation, given that many reports are surfacing that she has or will soon quit. This is the part that gets me angry and compels me to walk back through the story to find out the truth. See, I believe schools are really about teachers and without good teaching the school has little value. This teacher is one of four my son has had in his time there, and it doesn’t appear that any suitable replacement can be called up and brought to speed quickly. The other one is already dealing with a parade of substitute teachers as the result of a maternity leave, and isn’t learning much of anything this year. Still, this school and this community of parents seems worthwhile.

The real issue for me is how this got so out of control. I stand by the teachers and they in turn stand by the P and VP, but why did it spiral? A lot of people became vocal and someone called the news, that’s why. Now it is out of the hands of the parents and in the hands of a media hungry for a story and a resolution–no matter what that resolution winds up being. I’m worried the fallout will continue to spill over the the elementary side, and if that becomes the case, my boys will looking for a new school for the first time.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I believe there is something to why I’m disappointed about this year’s tackle season and team. At first I thought it was just about my kid’s lack of playing time. The main player went from scoring touchdowns on practically every carry to not being allowed to touch the ball and instantly becoming the lightest lineman on the team. He isn’t built that way, and the reasoning the coach gave, though cogent and valid in regards to the way he runs a team, is not at all sensible to me. You should not penalize a kid for not playing defense the way you want by taking him away from the position/side of the ball he is actually passionate about. I sat and watched him, learning all the weaknesses and things he needed to develop as a player and realized that there are absolute deficiencies in his game, but he is not being coached on how to correct them. In truth, the problem this year is coaching. I fear the coach has too much going on in his life, so as a result the players spend a significant portion of practice standing around or engaging in 11 starters on whatever bench player is left–usually my two boys. The starters learn the play beats and get a confidant rhythm against a D that is undermanned and outsized. It is basically an ego stroke for the starters and a pain clinic for the bench players. I am fully done with the whole experience this year and need to tune it out, before I get even more upset. Hopefully they win the championship like the boys want. Short of that, the season is largely a bust.

I was scanning the audible.com website when I came across yet another Elizabeth Gilbert (eat, pray, love) novel that strained the boundary between personal narrative and self-help. In truth, this latest effort feels a lot more like self-help than anything else. It set me to thinking about the genre in general and about how some people feel qualified to ‘preach’ about how to do things the right way whereas others don’t feel like they have the ethical or moral lungs to do so. Then I recognized something fundamental: All these people are really doing is talking about what worked for them and about how they were able to navigate the common difficulties of life and emerge intact. It set me to thinking about my own life and trials and learned experiences. This isn’t me saying I am going to write a self-help novel or even blog (unless that is in fact what I have been doing all along). This is me saying that all writing is in essence a form of that. We are always expressing experiences and trying to make sense of those experiences and our own choices. Every so often we figure out a routine that works and then, if we are very lucky, we get to share it with someone who it might affect in some small way.

1. Some Thoughts:
   This weekend marked my first win of the year in both leagues I am in. It also marked the first loss of the year for the Jets, first win for the Giants, and first win for my boys’ Jr. Pumas. That last bit is the most meaningful to me, because I got a chance to see the smile on their faces as a result of the victory.
2. That’s the good news. The bad is that a kid was carried out on a stretcher. A player from the Casa Grande JPW Rattlers suffered what appeared to be a head injury late in the 4th quarter. It is not clear how he was injured but since it was a head related injury, local authorities erred on the side of caution. I hope the kid is okay.
3. The disappointing part is the way the kids are being used in the games. On the one hand I am disappointed as a dad to see my eldest go from 6 tds in 7 touches to being the kid who doesn’t get to touch the ball at all and in truth is shoved on the offensive line as a ‘We gotta play him somewhere’ sort of play. The program he is a part of is starting to trouble me in general. The coaching style focuses on whole team activity vs. breaking kids up into groups and allowing them to move through stations for the 1:15 of practice they get twice a week. I have to defer to the coach, because he played college ball successfully a lot longer than I did, so has a sustained experience that level of coaching and also coaches a successful high school program—his second such program. On the other hand, high school kids come pre-loaded with a set of skills, which are usually learned at this level. I worry those fundamentals are being ignored in exchange for adherence to an offensive and defensive philosophy. Still, no helicoptering. They’ll learn this thing one way or another. In the end, I might just wind up teaching them myself.

I want to talk–nay, rant–about football and the state of the universe.

Let me start by saying this rant is powered by a bad Jets loss and, more fully, me having four kittens bent on destroying my home. I am someone who has claimed to be a ‘cat person’ for years, but four kittens and a momma who wants things just how she wants things for her kittens spells bad news, especially when there is a wimpy Yorkie involved. I don’t want to recount how many times I had to pull his whimpering butt out of a corner after being dominated by a kitten. It just isn’t cool, man. Not cool at all.

Also not cool: My lack of rhythm in fantasy football. I long labored under the impression that I was a fantasy impresario, a real candidate for fantasy consigliere to the stars. Maybe some of that would be true if I just figured out which of my instincts apply to this week or next week or the week after. Case and point: I saw something in Hankerson last week, enough to recognize the budding chemistry between him and Matty Ice. I did not, however realize the pitch count Roddy White has been on until just today. This in turn caused me to drop Rishard Matthews as a result of streaming receivers (poorly I might add) the week he scores 2 TDs to the tune of 100+ yards. Yeah, that isn’t happening next week, so hopefully I can snag him again in free agency, but the problem is I needed him this week. That or I need Manning to put up less than 30 fantasy points to record my first win of the year–that with Weeden and McCown (Luke at least) as my starters.

The fact is, I’m not putting in the necessary time to be truly great at breaking down football match ups. Sure, there are experts who do put in the time and still suck worse than me, but they ain’t me. I come pre-loaded with the belief that I can do anything I put my mind to. I haven’t ben proven wrong yet–yet I haven’t put my full energies to much of anything over the past decade. Perhaps that is a larger conversation to be shared. It seems like being good enough is good enough for most people.

Not sure it is good enough anymore for me.

 

 

The misogynistic fun fest that is Fox’s The Last Man on Earth is my latest binge/purge. TLMN is one of those shows that falls into itself as the first season moves towards climax. The main character begins to focus towards being a slightly better person and as such completes the rotund picture of who we would be should we be in his shoes. It isn’t high art, but I like it. In truth, there isn’t much that is good right now.

John Truby quipped that the best new stuff coming out is on TV, but I must admit that stuff is few and farm between. Above all else, that stuff is unsustainable, which is the curse of TV in some way. TV is meant to be sustainable in the old model. The new model ought to point to limited duration shows that maximize audience and have a complete character arc with a beginning, middle, and defined end in sight.

 

I’ve gotten to the point where I am starting to feel very good about the 2015-16 ‘work year’. I ended my summer with a burst of energy and faith in what was to come only to suffer snag after snag of disappointment. Now I’m at a point (and a place) where all feels good and right with the universe. I’m building towards something again, writing at an increasing pace, and starting to be more honest with myself about what I want and need.

Classes are fantastic again. This hasn’t happened in some time, but I can say that I enjoy every class I teach, though I enjoy them all in very different ways. Some are wonderful because of the challenge, the students, or both. I’ve pulled back as father-coach and recognize that it is far too soon to be crowning my kids as MVPs of all that is good in sports. In fact, I’m moving gradually back towards that idea of fundamentals–not just of a specific sport but mechanical fundamentals of body movement, exercise, and teamwork. I realize more and more that game-specific skills don’t mean all that much at this level. Right now it is more about how courageous a kid is and how patient they are and how much they trust the person standing beside them to do their job. Lofty concepts that can all be broken down into a simple game of capture the flag, 4 points, or sharks and minnows, which all remain the currency of good youth practices.

The writing remains a situation.
While I am writing more, I have yet to hit that stride that comes late in a project. Moreover, I haven’t found a way to carry that from project to project.

I have, on the other hand, found a stride when it comes to teaching and I am in a very happy place with that. If only I can combine the philosophies  into one smooth movement, life would be on fire…

I spent a lot of good years first learning and then getting caught up in the language of academia. I found myself wandering through monstrous diatribes about the completion agenda and outcomes and learning goals—all designed to teach me what makes a good teacher. Unfortunately, all any of it did was to remove me from personal instinct and teach me how to speak a language that is wholly foreign to students and in doing so, overlook the most important thing there is when it comes to teaching: learning.

 

My first time teaching I was thrown into a classroom full of honors students without any formal training. There was a class on teaching and I signed up for it the next day, but I learned as they learned, and I learned from them. Fortunately, I had an advantage in this situation. I’d been around teachers my entire life. My mother taught in a resource room for 20 yrs and I myself had the ultimate edge: I was a smart, thoroughly disengaged student for most of my learning life. Basically, I was one of them and as such I knew exactly how to reach them.

 

That situation ended with me loving the job of teaching and signing up for more and more of it. Eventually that took me to ASU and from there to a local community college that was focused on the classroom more than it was the rhetoric of education—at least for a while.

 

The moment you start to talk about accreditation and completion goals and large-scale programs, you stop talking about good teaching. IMHO, good teaching is exactly like good coaching—you build a gameplan around the talent you have as opposed to trying to force everyone in the room to do something you’ve done for so long that it has become second nature.

 

I recognize the world isn’t black and white and you cannot completely engage in one thing or the other. The reality of education is that teachers are expected to have their feet in both worlds, and professors get full time roles because of the stuff they do outside of the classroom—the stuff that makes the college look good and gets you noticed—as opposed to anything they do inside the classroom. In my own job and interviewing experience, we will spend 45 minutes or more asking questions about who these people are as ‘educators’ and about 20 minutes watching them actually teach. Until recently, we did the teaching part without even having students in the room. What sort of false construct is that?

 

This semester I’ve stepped back entirely from the administrative side of the academic world. I’ve given up on presenting work at conferences, chasing academic publishing credits and innovation awards, and even looking for recognition within the college. I’ve drilled down my focus to what works best in the classroom and discovered that when I peel away the sticky glue residue that is everything that comes with the job of being a professor, the stuff beneath is raw energy that needs to be engaged and channeled. The human brain wants to learn and if we allow ourselves, each person standing up in front of that classroom has the engrained tools to engage it.

 

I am officially all in.

I realize I should’ve done this a lot sooner—like draft day when I had the chance to snag the Jets D, but due to a computer scrolling error never realized they were still on the board. Now I have the Big Blue D set to start for me tomorrow evening and I believe with all my heart that they will pay out. That means the Giants will too, as you will soon discover…

 

NYG over WAS
Consider who they’ve lost to and in what fashion. The Falcons are #10 on the power chart, and that game was NY’s to loose, which they did but I feel like composure is forming amongst this young and scattered D. The offense is coming together as well, especially following Preston Parker (5 drops—3 of which could’ve changed the outcome of a total of two games) being cut. Like Vereen said, “We just gotta finish”

CIN over BAL
Something is amiss in Ravens country. I cannot figure out what it is exactly, but I have a feeling it has to do with the secondary. I expect to see them picked apart Sunday Morning. Wait, I know what it is… No sizzle.

CAR over NO
I’m assuming that Brees does not play, but if he does the outcome might still be the same. I wonder what they were thinking when they let Graham walk.

CLE over OAK

I trust the CLE secondary to not let Cooper and co run wild all over them. I also believe in the power of Manziel to extend plays to the point where Benjamin can put up points.

ATL over DAL
NY tried to stop Julio and failed. DAL has even less of a chance here.

HOU over TB
This is the week to start the HOU D. They will come together and make an enormous impact on the rookie QB.

SD over MIN
NE over JAX
These two are gimmie games. Nuff said.

NYJ over Philly
Sanchez might get some work in. The way I saw the Jets hit Luck is the way they may hit Bradford, and that dude cannot take it. Make your waiver wire grab right now. Butt fumble and all…

PIT over STL
This is about the passing attack and the ability of the Steelers to stretch the field. Mostly though, it is about the return of Bell

IND over TEN
They cannot lose forever.

ARI over SF
BUF over MIA
Same issues here. Old rivals clashing with one team clearly emerging as a divisional contender and the other emerging as Just Another Franchise.

SEA over CHI

Bam Chancellor!!!!!!

DEN over DET

I don’t know how they keep winning but they do.

GB over KC
I DO know how they keep losing and we will see more of that on a high schoring and close Monday Night game.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This will be posted late. I’m not internet adjacent at the moment and may not be for hours.