Month: September 2014

What happened to the Giants this Monday is unforgivable. By that I mean I cannot forgive the Giants for being such a terrible ball club right now. Here is what bothers me the most: The club had every opportunity to create a better situation for themselves and failed to capitalize on that in the offseason and especially in free agency. Anyone following the team knows the long and historical decline of the O-Line. Now Victor Cruz is complaining about the number of targets? Yeah, the Giants are a hot mess who are going to try to save their soul this Sunday at 1PM. I’m not watching. I can’t watch. I can’t look away if I watch, because it is like a car wreck in progress. Eli has his thumb in his mouth and he’s reaching for is safety blanket in the form of TE Larry Donell. That is just not going to cut it, and odds are the Giants are just not going to win. Here’s some tips on who might win:

 

PIT over BAL
They say the best way to get over distractions is to throw yourself into work (okay maybe I say that), but the power of the media machine and the Ray Rice story is enough to distract the team just a bit. PIT has too much D for BAL to win this one.

MIA over BUF
The Dolphins showed me something in that win over the Patriots. They proved they can slug it out with a great coach, even though they don’t have what anyone would consider a great team. The O-Line in MIA is solid and that will keep them in this shootout all the way to the end.

CAR over DET
The Panthers are flat out better than the Giants, and their secondary can slow down everyone outside of Megatron. At the same time, the offense can control the clock enough to make this a close win.

ATL over CIN
Not sold on the Red wonder.

NO over CLE

MIN over NE
Too much AP here.

NYG over AZ
Here’s what I noticed at the game–Carson Palmer’s tendencies and the playcalling tendencies are extremely obvious. They get by on having so many talented players that it forces the opponent into 1 on 1 situations where they often lose. The Giants will win those matchups defensively, and the way the Cards D is beat up means there will be some space in the short middle zone to do damage. I wanna believe in NYC so bad.

TEN over DAL

SEA over SD

STL over TB

DEN over KC

NYJ over GB
Despite Geno, Gang green gets a tight win.

OAK over HOU
I believe in Carr!

SF over CHI
Start the SF defense here. There’s go’n to be a killin…

IND over PHI
Philly was exposed by the Jags. They can be beat and IND has the O to do it.

Today I ran into a young writer I used to work with. He was working the registers at Chick-fil-A and lamenting his lost opportunities to write. It pissed me off. In truth I used to be that kid and sometimes still am. Here is a classic case of someone who had the fire to be really successful at something and then met resistance with what he tried to do. He turned around in circles, a dog chasing his own tail and hoping on the next rotation there would be someone there to back him up and make him feel like he could achieve. Instead he found the daily faceslap of life and a harsh existence that all too quickly got away from him.

 

This is my story too. I’m still working to decode the secret of motivation—of how to keep going in the face of adversity; of how to not quit when it gets hard. When I see that kid I see the person I become when motivation is merely nagging at me, tugging at the hem of my attention while I try to keep focus on making it through another difficult day.

 

A friend suggested that it is hard to do what you need to do when you’re dealing with personal drama. I agree with her wholeheartedly, but I also think that we actively choose what we are going to do and what we are going to focus on each day. If I can separate from the world for 10 minutes a day, I can separate from the world for 25 minutes a day or 45 or even as much as an hour. The thing is I gotta want to do it more than I want to talk about doing it or think about doing it or plan to do it tomorrow. Furthermore, for me at least, there needs to be people around me who see that effort and recognize its value and there needs to be at least one person in my life who sees me slack off and says, “that isn’t gonna fly.” Sure, in a perfect world that person would be me, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll let myself get away with a lot. I won’t be optimal until I find myself in the optimal situation, but I can at least be functional and this boy, this self-failed writer can be functional as well.

 

He’s just gotta want to get there more than he wants to ignore the pain of what it takes to get there.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Maybe I’m not done talking about the Ray Rice thing just yet. Now I had to hunt to find this article. Most searches for Ray Rice or his fiancee result in videos of the attack and articles about the attack and little about her and how she feels about this. Everyone is treating her like a witless victim who needs to get out of the situation. They basically chastise her for staying in the relationship and put on victims and experts to spin the same story. Here is the story being spun: He hit her, he needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, he should never be allowed to play football again, and she must be mentally messed up to want to stay with him. Well, I’m not so quick to judge. We pride ourselves as a nation that gives people a second chance, but that isn’t true when it comes to our exemplars of polarizing events is it? Ray Rice has been labeled by everyone I’ve talked to as a villain and not one person is willing to allow him the opportunity to learn from his mistake. Instead they see this as indicative of how the relationship has always been and indicative of his character as a man. We all seem to want to press the delete button on the dude, but what about what she wants? What about the possibility of him learning to be a better man and really understanding–as a society–what happens with that relationship and how such things can be fixed.

I saw the video and I still disagree with the punishment.

We can talk about the fact that she (without any comparable force) backhanded him twice, which in his unfortunate and dysfunctional cultural upbringing is an unforgivable provocation, but that just sounds like excuse making. No, I think the real problem is how the team and the league handled this situation. Let’s start with the facts:

Fact #1: The media and the league–heck all of us–knew that Ray Rice hit his fiancee. What seems to have changed this whole punishment is TMZ’s visual evidence of the attack. In other words, the new punishment is a direct result of America’s highly visual culture. Until we saw the video we could pretend it wasn’t real. Those in power could be satisfied with a 2-game ban and move on. Pictures change things. However, pictures don’t change the facts on the ground. We knew he hit her from the get go and he only got a 2-game ban.

Fact #2: As a result of the initial ban the NFL toughened its policy on domestic violence. You earn a 6-game ban for the first offense and a lifetime ban for any subsequent offense. Why then was Ray Rice cut and subsequently suspended indefinitely for a first offense? So the NFL creates a strict policy and then tosses it out the window in regards to a past case? I think Ray Rice has grounds for a major lawsuit here–both against the team and the league itself. The team case is harder to try because he did suck last year–which is why I think this is getting so much traction. If we have video of Tom Brady punching Giselle in the grill or Megatron doing the same, they aren’t getting cut.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It is not lost on me that the Penn State ban was dropped the same day. So basically they received a 2-yr ban for being found complicit in covering up the sexual assault of minors. I wonder what would’ve happened to Penn State if we had video of the sexual assaults?

Around the age of 9 I decided to be a professional football player. It took me to college to realize I had neither the temperament nor dedication to achieve that goal. I’ll probably always see myself as a failed athlete, but I’ll likely never stop believing that I have the ability to bounce back and at least be athletic well into my 50’s. Of course, as I’ve covered time and again, there is a gulch between believing you can be something and actually getting off the couch to be productive. My friend Caleb is deeply indicative of that. The man says nothing about wanting or needing to be physically fit, but he’s the one in the gym and shedding the pounds I continue to dream of. Still, this isn’t a post about Caleb or about getting fit. It is a post about the how our dreams filter through our lives and become what we do.

I started coaching after football ended for me in college. I coached 10-12 year olds and worked to instill in them the mindset that I hadn’t been able to achieve. I knew what it looked like and even how one could get there, so it was only natural that I would coach it. Coaching led me directly to graduate school. I’m being literal here. One of the parents showed up to practice one day with some grad school paperwork and demanded I fill it out. I did and the rest is Talis-history. Because school became such a singular purpose, I stopped coaching for years. I kept playing when I could–mostly flag tournaments here and there. When I moved to AZ I signed on with a semi-pro club called the Flagstaff Hitmen (though I lived no where near Flagg). I drove for hours every week just for the chance to hold on to that faded dream. On Sundays I would recuperate from the Saturday game and study the pros hoping to learn something I could replicate in my next game.

Soon that brief flicker of a dream reborn ended and fatherhood took hold. It was another four years before I even picked up a football. My eldest started playing five years ago and I first coached him in his second season. I’ve coached him every year since, and when he turned 8 he let me know he’d be going pro in due time. I don’t know if this is his dream or mine, but I know that it really isn’t about football. It is about sport and competition, and facing off against another human being and feeling that connection with those like him.

Dreams don’t go away. They stay hidden in the corners of your mind like a ghost or persistent shadow waiting for the moment to cast memory on your daily life. The dream, if meaningful enough invades every aspect of your life compelling you to meet it, to shape your reality in the fashion of what you dream–what you believe you are capable of achieving. On Sundays I watch football and play football video games, and talk about the deeper meaning of sport and competition with my boys, and when my body and mind are good for it, I take to the field and live out fun and glory and memory in the style of what is and what could have been.

 

Some thoughts:

1. Under one minute left: It is interesting how sometimes the words crash down like a waterfall and other times I struggle to put a single sentence together. If I could figure out how to keep that faucet going all the time, I’d be a trillionaire–and ridiculously happy to have so many words…

I just returned from a ‘date’ with my now ten yr old boy. We don’t get many chances to have one on one time, so when he suggested that he wanted some daddy time I was more than happy to make that happen. The hours before our night out were spent celebrating his birthday. I spent most of that time in frustrated silence, because the day did not go nearly as fabulously as I hoped. You only get one, maybe two chances to add a digit, so ten is a big deal to me. There is little chance I’ll see the boy turn 100, so this is the one shot I get for a digit birthday. Unfortunately his two younger siblings didn’t get the ‘this kind matters’ memo and decided to spend the day fighting each other over ownership of everything from the air being breathed to proxy battles over the space they so clearly rent in each other’s heads.

Things did not go well. By noon the bday boy was yelling at them too and we four struggled to find even the most basic enjoyment. We considered going to the pool but the motivation was tempered by the outrageous behaviors of the younger two. They calmed for a spell while cake was shared and the eldest opened his smattering of gifts. He got 10 gifts–8 of his own choosing and one chosen by mom and one chosen by dad. The 10 was meant to represent one gift for each year of his life. One gift was also meant to serve as the connection between years lived and the growth of tomorrow.

Afterwards he and I left to watch a film at the local theater. He remarked it was the 3rd film we’d seen–just the two of us–in his whole life. He pointed out that two of the three came this year. What struck me was that he counted and he remembered these rare solo times. I love that kid. I love them all and they each deserve a chance to have a one on one with each parent. The whole day and into the night when we were together I was logging the moments like photos rolled into my datacard. It seems like kids are tiny forever when you’re changing diapers and feeding them strained peas. Then they start school and suddenly their off to college. Time is never enough to have wonderful memories with your kids. That is why tonight was so important. It was a moment–our moment to be who we are when we are alone with each other; a father and a first born kid enjoying a movie and good conversation.

When news of the Ferguson killing broke I found my inbox inundated with news alerts from all the usual suspects—CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc. They all told the same story albeit from different sides. After a day or so of this it became clear that these news outlets were reaching. They clamored to find something new and exciting about the case to reveal to me so I’d tune in. Unfortunately, the evidence collection and examination process doesn’t run on their light speed schedule, so the conversations devolved into opinion, conjecture, and an absurd amount of finger pointing. It was par for the course of every big news story that has come out over the last few years. There wasn’t more to the story, so they needed to manifest more of the same story to fill hourly time blocks 24 hours a day. I largely abandoned the major news networks as my daily source of news for this very reason. I wanted careful considerate pieces instead of the ‘what can I say to make you love me?’ attitude found on all of these channels. For a time all I watched was sports news, figuring that in the refuge of sport I could find stories that avoided the neediness proliferated by the big three. Sadly, I was wrong. In fact, I discovered that sports news was possibly worse than the network news stations, because there were less stories they were willing to tell, and as a result, ‘what can I say to make you love me?’ was more apparent than ever.

I want to talk about Johnny Football. The late first round draft pick spent the summer battling for a starting role on the otherwise irrelevant Cleveland Browns. He lost. Despite news coverage to the contrary, he lost in a fairly dramatic fashion. Coach Pettine hinted at this, reflecting on the maturity and poise of his starter, Brian Hoyer. What Pettine didn’t say was Manziel flipped the bird to the opposing sideline, showing his glaring immaturity in the process. He didn’t say the media’s narrowly focused glare was so harsh that all anyone was willing to do was watch the story play out as expected—with the award winning college QB coming to the big show and wrecking shop. The media didn’t let it go. Brian Hoyer is not a story guy. Nobody cares or even knows about him. He doesn’t do Snickers commercials or party with Lebron. He doesn’t make ridiculous money signs every time he manages to do something relevant on the field. In defense of some analysts, Brian Hoyer isn’t great either. If he was, there wouldn’t be a Johnny Cleveland saga. There’d be a Johnny Cowboy saga instead. Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones all but acquiesced to this when he talked about how someone like Manziel would help the team remain relevant. Note: He didn’t say good. He even parsed the statement by talking about 8-8 records vs. Super Bowl wins.

The point is, the story isn’t even about good football anymore. The story exists almost entirely for itself. Johnny Football is a self-sustaining media organism that weaves, Kardashian-like through popular culture dragging with it some derivative slug wake of the American dream. Maybe he’ll be a top-notch QB one day, and maybe he won’t, but it is interesting to note that he gets more media attention than most of the QBs in the league—proven winners who have achieved again and again. He has been discussed more on Sportscenter than any other rookie QB, despite being one of two first rounder’s (Blake Bortles is supposedly on the shelf all year) that has no real chance to start week one

There was a MMQB article about football in Ferguson that may be the most poignant and useful story on the situation down there yet. What MMQB tries to do is tell the stories around football. This is the same site that had a deep and revealing story about the character of Richie Incognito months before bullying allegations cropped up. The same site that spoke with Jason Avant about the very real and troubling Locker Room Culture in America.

There are real sports stories out there for stations like ESPN, just like there are real personal interest and public interest stories out there for the big three. These stations actively choose not to tell them, because they want to lure viewers with the lowest common denominator: flash and attention. This is the reason why the blogosphere blew up when Coach Pettine wouldn’t say whether or not Manziel would get snaps on Sunday. Even not saying something is news there. However, the real news is happening all around it. The real news is about the Cleveland D and a rookie corner who could be Pettine’s key piece to what is likely to be a top 5 Defense. These are the stories not being told, and the stories not being told are the ones that matter.

 

We need better sports stories.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Yesterday I tried to convince my kids that my computer does not have voice recognition capabilities and they told me I was wrong. Then they said, “Ok Google, show daddy you can talk and use his computer” And it did. It looked up a bunch of stuff related to the prompt. Then it filtered down and selected the best million or so results based on what it thought I’d want to see. Technology is starting to freak me out.

Faulkner once complained, “It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.” Yet so often we try to do all of those other things in an effort to actively avoid work, to shun it the way we push aside our siblings and parents in public when we think we are being cool or brave or somehow forging ahead with the strength and passion of a singular dedicated soul. I think we do this–I do this–as an instinctive emotional response, this avoidance. I for one try to avoid putting myself in the path of failure. I do too much of what is easy or what plays to my strengths and not enough of what is hard for me and what I need to do to be a better person and to be a more developed me.

Ann Landers writes, “To those who need encouragement, remember this: beware of quitting too soon. Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book was rejected by twenty-three publishers. The twenty-fourth publisher sold six million copies.” I could’ve found a similar quote for JK Rowling or Dan Brown. The point being made is simple. Work can be a refuge, a temple, an opportunity, or just a long fail. It is a canvas that I must make full use of in order to reach my potential. Even if I fail–at writing, at teaching–the trying is the real thing. Getting to be the best I can be is the real thing.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m using WordPress 4.0 (Benny) for the first time. It feels the same visually, but I’m looking forward to exploring what has changed under the hood.
2. Football is back and the Packers still suck. This makes me feel bad for my eldest as he is slowly becoming a Packers fan.

Week One! I’m going to start this thing slow, if for no better reason than I want to focus my ten minutes on the two NY teams that matter the most to me. I’ll go in order of importance.

NY Giants DEFEAT Detroit Lions
Yep, I’m fairly certain that the Eli show is going to kick off slowly but get going by the second half. I believe so much that I’ve put Cruz in my starting fantasy lineup. The line issues that plagued the team last year haven’t gone away, but they upgraded the RB position in a number of ways, which means there is always the fear of the run–a fear that wasn’t there last year. The NY Defense is a stronger unit overall, despite the loss of some high value linemen. Put those things together vs. a porous Detroit secondary, and you get a recipe for Giants success this monday night.

New York Jets DEFEAT Oakland Raiders
I’m sold on Carr as the future of the Raiders franchise. I even think he’ll find success this year. Heck, I think the guy is gonna get a TD against the J-E-T-S, but just the one. MJD won’t get it going against this stout run defense, and for all the coolness under pressure that the man shows, everyone in NY knows that Smith needs to produce quickly in order to avoid a still dynamic Mike Vick taking his job.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. So it ends up being the go. The game triggered something in me. I really had fun and I really wanted to be able to move better than I did. The hands are there if I can focus. The agility is there as shown by some pretty nice open field flag grabs, and I can work on getting the speed back. That ship has sailed, but it anchored somewhere offshore.
2. I’m really tired–drained in the way only athleticism brings. If I’m invited back to my basketball team (50/50 chance there), I’m going to give them a version of me they haven’t seen yet…

I struggle with the 39 thing a lot. As a result I put myself in positions where I’m forced to attempt athleticism and replenished youth when I physically cannot pull it off. That cycle is what finds me suiting up tomorrow evening for a all-too-public flag football game. I haven’t played with the Sunday Gang in over 9 months and my foray into basketball was abysmal. Yet, here I go again. Why, I ask myself? Because deep down inside I think it is too easy to let go of the person you want to be, and we ought to never settle for what direction life pushes us in. Believe me, it pushes real hard.

I’m just talking about the physical stuff here; about the result of choices made and habits formed. One day you wake up and realize 20 years of cupcakes and lemon bread was a really stupid idea. You think about making healthy choices now, but habit is a bitch. I mean nicotine, thats a physical addictive. The body craves it. Still, I’m a biofeedback guy. My body is a chump, but my mind… Yeah my mind is 3 pounds of electro-stimulated bad-assery. It pushes my body around the way Tyson used to manhandle punks in the ring. It tells me that I can or can’t and changing that momentum is hard work. Of course, this is the same brain that sabotages me and tells me I’m lazy, so there’s that.

I can still win though. I can still hurl myself in the path of utter humiliation and through this possible Epic Fail find a new momentum–a drive to be at my best physically… or at least shed the man boobs.

This isn’t a post about right or wrong, good or evil, Republican or Democrat or any of that stuff. It is the result of a dream I had last night that felt more like a town hall meeting. The people were debating the effectiveness of Obama and the choices he made over the last 7 years. Some were talking about his dovelike approach to world politics and longing for the days of the American hawks storming the world stage guns blazing. I think the dream was my way of processing what I’ve been hearing out of politicians and the media as of late. There is a lot of talk about how America is not aggressive enough on the world stage and how that is costing us influence on the world stage. There is truth in that but is it the whole truth?

 

Remember a few years ago when all the new was about how terrible it was for us to be sending unmanned drones around the world bombing people we felt were terrorists? Popular opinion was that this was a bad thing. Obama’s drone army was the wrong approach to the war on terror. Fast forward to today and the same president is being bashed for not having a strong enough military response to what is happening in the middle east and the Ukraine.

 

I don’t have great answers. I recognize that we don’t have the troops to backstop Ukraine, Isreal, and battle Isis. I also recognize that drones aren’t going to be enough. On the other hand, I don’t know what is going to happen if we don’t get involved. The one thing I do recognize for certain is that our national arrogance has reached the point where we feel it is both our right and obligation to do something. Why? Because we are Team America: World Police?

 

It is at least important to acknowledge the arrogance here. Whenever there is a conflict in the world the question of ‘should we help?’ inevitably pops up. That help always comes at great cost to our nation in the form of wealth and lives. The benefits to us as a nation are always limited and fleeting. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that ISIS is ravaging the region we just left largely because the region has no interest in keeping the democracy we left there. Why would they suddenly want a secular government when they’ve been doing things a totally different way since long before Columbus landed on what he thought was India?

 

There is more to talk about here than 10 minutes allows, so I’ll add this to the list of topics that are to be continued…