Oh Yeah ... Well, My Dad Can Hit a 1 Iron!

Every year, the final round of the U.S. Open men’s golf tournament is played on Father’s Day, and every year I roll my eyes when television announcers for the event make reference to how fitting it is or would be for someone to win because of some connection of that golfer to fatherhood.  I roll my eyes because it’s typically offered with a tone of serendipity even though it’s not serendipitous at all because the tournament’s final round is held on Father’s Day every year.  Yet, this year as I watch coverage of the event as I usually do, I’m recognizing a Father’s Day connection of my own that’s not so planned.

 

This year’s tournament is held at the Merion Golf Club, just outside of Philadelphia, and coverage of the event has featured, as coverage always does, pieces that discuss the history of the course that is hosting the tournament.  For Merion, the 1950 U.S. Open that it hosted figures prominently in course history.  Ben Hogan won the event less than a year and a half after a horrific automobile accident that almost killed him and that left doctors suggesting that Hogan might never play golf again.  Hogan’s shot with a 1 iron on the last hole of the championship became one of golf’s iconic shots—so iconic that a plaque on the golf course commemorates the shot.  In coverage of the event today, NBC ran a piece that looks at that shot and at the legacy of the club that Hogan used—a 1 iron.

 

As NBC’s piece noted, 1 iron clubs are difficult to find, and they’re difficult to find because most golfers struggle to use them.  One of golf’s all-time greats, Lee Trevino, is quoted, after being hit by lightning on a course once, as saying that next time he played during a storm he would just hold up a 1 iron because “even God can’t hit a 1 iron.”  Yet, Ben Hogan could hit a 1 iron, and that’s just one thing that contributes to Hogan’s legacy.  Hogan is tied with Gary Player for fourth on the list of most men’s major championships won, with nine.  (Jack Nicklaus has 18, Tiger Woods has 14, and Walter Hagen has 11.)  He’s one of only five players (with Nicklaus, Player, Woods, and Gene Sarazen) to win each of golf’s four major championships—the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship—at least once.  And he did that having only played the British Open once – in 1953, when he won it.  He also won the Masters and the U.S. Open that year, and he perhaps would have become the only golfer to win all four majors in one year, but because of overlap with the British Open at that time, he couldn’t play in the PGA Championship.

 

As much as Hogan is known for these career achievements, he’s also well known for his work ethic.  That work ethic involves accounts of the calluses that formed on his hands from so much practice, stories of golfers awoken in hotel rooms in the wee hours of the morning by the sound of Hogan practicing in the room next door, and the legend of how Hogan could tell you on which groove on a golf club he had hit a ball during a stroke.  That dedicated work ethic has led me to admire Hogan perhaps more than any other golfer.  I developed that admiration shortly after Hogan’s death in 1997 when, after hearing reports about him, I read Curt Sampson’s biography of Hogan, which continues to sit on my bookshelf in my office.  Though I have to give a nod to Nicklaus’ achievements, and though Woods and Hagen have also more majors, I’d likely make Hogan my choice as the best male golfer ever.  So, when stories of Hogan’s 1 iron in 1950 accompany the return of the U.S. Open to Merion, they resonate intensely with my golf fandom, and I owe that to my dad.

 

My dad has been a routine golfer for over 40 years.  He played for a while on the Suffolk County Community College team in the early 1970s, and he continues to play golf to this day, including a round this very weekend with my brother.  Though I don’t play very often, I really enjoy golf, and I watch it regularly on television.  I rarely miss watching the U.S. Open or the British Open, and I enjoy having weekly tournaments on my television in the background as I work on other things.

 

In the mid-1990s, around the same time that I developed my interested in Hogan, my dad gave me his old clubs, and while a graduate student at Michigan State University, I went through the period of perhaps the most golfing I had done in my life.  Mind you, this wasn’t anywhere near what avid golfers do, but it was more of a commitment than at any other time in my life.

 

A number of years later, after I had moved to Arizona, my dad came to visit, and on his visit he asked if he could have one of his clubs back.  It was a Ping 1 iron that had served him well over the years and that he missed having in his contemporary bag.  Since I wasn’t golfing all that much—though more than I do now—I gladly returned it to him, and he was happy to have it back.

 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t even had it back for a couple of days when he accidentally left it on the ground at a hole while playing a course in Arizona.  When he went back to look for it, he couldn’t find it.  His wonderful 1 iron was now irretrievably gone.

 

A few years later, my wife and I found a reasonable price on eBay for a Ping 1 iron like the one my dad had had, and we gave it to him for Christmas that year.  It’s probably one of the best gifts I’ve ever given my dad, and he still uses it today.

 

So, as I watch the U.S Open at Merion Golf Club on this Father’s Day, I’m reminded of my dad.  My dad is largely responsible for the love of golf that has me watching today.  And just like Ben Hogan did at the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open at Merion less than two months before my dad was born, my dad can hit a 1 iron.

The Hot 100 and Me

Exactly 25 years ago, I got my first copy of Billboard magazine, which featured charts for the week ending May 21, 1988.  That week, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine resided at number 1 on the Hot 100 singles chart for a second week with "Anything For You."  One of my favorite songs of the time, George Michael's "One More Try," occupied the number 2 spot, poised to take over at number one the following week.  And down one notch to number 3, yet retaining its bullet, was Johnny Hates Jazz with "Shattered Dreams."  As Chart Beat told me in that issue, "Shattered Dreams" was the first song in some time to fall yet retain a bullet, which is the symbol used on the chart to mark singles that have the highest airplay and sales gains for the week.  Falling and retaining a bullet would become more commonplace in the 1990s, after chart methodology changed in 1991, but in 1988, it remained a rare occurrence.

Throughout the next year or so, I would periodically pick up an issue of Billboard every several weeks.  It was a little too expensive to buy every week, but I still wanted to keep track of more than what Casey Kasem offered on the radio on American Top 40 every weekend.  By the summer of 1989, though, I had taken the plunge and purchased a subscription.  At around a couple hundred dollars for the year, that was a pricey item for a 16-year-old high school student, yet I saw it as a worthwhile expenditure.  For three years -- until I finally let my yearly subscription lapse in 1992 -- I anxiously anticipated receiving the magazine in the mail, and I pored over the charts, especially the Hot 100, keeping precise track of the chart movement of all songs that hit the Top 15 and keeping my eye on the rest of the songs on the chart as well.  By August 1989, I had begun my own weekly chart -- a make-believe chart based on my favorite popular music hits -- originally consisting of my top 25 songs, though after just a few months taking a Top 30 chart form.  I would continue that practice until the spring of 1998, at which time my interests and the world of pop music had diverged enough that I saw value in ceasing the practice.

Over that decade between my first issue of Billboard and the end of my own chart, I had invested myself in the Hot 100 in additional ways.  My Honors thesis during the Spring 1994 semester at Bowling Green State University examined changes in the Hot 100 based on the 1991 methodology modification.  I looked at how the new methodology significantly altered song movement up and down the chart.  That paper stemmed from work I had done for a Summer 1992 Sociology course on Popular Music and Society that became the first paper I delivered at an academic conference -- "Achy Breaky Chart:  Changes in Billboard's Hot 100 Chart," which I delivered at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Annual Meeting in Indianapolis in October 1992.  A year later, at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Annual Meeting in East Lansing, Michigan, I would deliver a second paper -- "Achy Breaky II:  More Changes in Billboard's Hot 100 Chart" -- that focused on genre implications of the methodological change.

These research projects reflected the interest in studying popular music that was fundamental in directing me to the study of popular culture.  In more recent years, I've focused more on other aspects of popular culture, particularly sports, and my interest in popular music has veered away from chart analysis, as reflected in my co-edited book on the interpretation and significance of Don McLean's "American Pie."  Yet, the draw toward diligently following Billboard's Hot 100 chart played a very significant role in my development as a person and as a scholar.  That makes this a particularly important 25th anniversary.

A Majestic Message

My wife is a big fan of the television program The Walking Dead, and while I don't watch it regularly, I did watch its first season, and I'm not opposed to going to events connected to it. So, a couple of months ago, when tickets went on sale for "The Walking Dead Live: An Evening with the Cast & Creators of the Hit Show" at the State Theatre in Playhouse Square in Cleveland, I purchased two.  A little less than three weeks ago -- on February 14 -- the event occurred, and my wife and I attended.

Originally, the event was billed with appearances by executive producer Greg Nicotero as well as three actors from the show:  Lauren Cohan (who plays Maggie), Steven Yeun (who plays Glenn), and Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl).  In the end, Nicotero and Cohan made it, but Yeun was replaced by Michael Booker (who plays Merle), and Reedus was replaced by Laurie Holden (who plays Andrea).  I don't believe my wife was alone in her disappointment that Reedus didn't make it.  Audience reactions at the event -- in addition to, among other things, a particular Time Warner Cable commercial -- suggested that Daryl is one of the more popular characters from the show.  Meanwhile, audience reactions at the event also clearly demonstrated that, though one of the show's original characters, Holden's character, Andrea, is one of the less liked characters on the show.

Yet, in the end, in Cleveland I think Holden stole the show.

For the first half of the event, the four members of the cast and crew talked about the show with Cleveland radio personality Alan Cox.  Then, for the second half, the event opened up for audience questions for Nicotero and the three actors.  Amid all of this, Nicotero offered a lot of useful commentary on the making of the show, and Cohan chimed in likewise, though she seemed to participate less often.  Perhaps Cohan's smaller amount of participation can be explained by Nicotero's tendency to dominate conversation and by Rooker's performance.  While Rooker did have a few poignant moments, such as his last set of comments in which he eloquently explained the tremendous role that grief plays as the backdrop for the show, Rooker spent a lot of time goofing off during the event, which was funny the first couple of times but then seemed to detract from the more insightful discussion that could have been had.

Meanwhile, Holden's participation seemed a bit understated as well (perhaps for the same reasons as Cohan's was), but she produced arguably the best moments of the event.  First, with the audience clearly against such a defense, she was asked to defend her character Andrea's actions -- the very actions that have incurred the wrath of fans of the show upon the character.  Holden's defense was masterful.  By the time she had completed it, I felt quite a new appreciation for her character and why her character has taken the actions that she has.

Additionally, when a couple of young women who stated they are aspiring actresses asked the question that I'm sure actors tire of answering -- "What advice would you give to aspiring actors?" -- Holden took the lead with her answer of "get an education."  She proceeded to explain -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- how higher education broadens one's horizons and allows one to see the kinds of various perspectives that are useful as an actor for understanding and taking on various roles.

Of course, as an educator in the humanities at an institution of higher learning, this was music to my ears.  I think, though, Holden's advice was made all the more powerful by its coupling with her defense of her character.  She not only offered the advice; she modeled it by providing a compelling defense of the actions of her character to an audience that was already set against that character.

Many folks know of Holden as an actor from her recurring role on The X-Files -- a reference that was made during the The Walking Dead event in Cleveland, and a reference that Holden expressed gratitude that some fans knew.  Before The Walking Dead, I knew Holden best from her performance as Adele Stanton, the love interest of Jim Carrey's main character Peter Appleton in the film The Majestic.  I very much enjoyed The Majestic when I saw it, and I very much enjoyed Holden's performance at "The Walking Dead Live: An Evening with the Cast & Creators of the Hit Show" on February 14.  I'm very grateful for Holden's comments about education, and I'm impressed by how well she embodied those comments in what else she said that night.  When I do watch The Walking Dead, I will do so with much more of an eye toward understanding Holden's character of Andrea, and when I see Holden in any performance, I will do so with an eye toward acknowledging the sincerity and intelligence of her craft.   I'll also do so with a profound thankfulness for her public acknowledgement of the value of the humanistic components of higher education.

My Hypothetical 2013 MLB Hall of Fame Ballot

Results of Major League Baseball's Hall of Faming voting are scheduled to be announced tomorrow, and just like each of the past few years, I'm posting here my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot.  In other words, if I had a vote, for whom would I vote.  If you've read any of those posts, you know that I have a rather inclusive set of standards for the Hall of Fame -- I'd assume among the more inclusive you will find.  So, consistently, I would want to vote for more than the 10 players to which one is limited.  Given the additions to the ballot this year, that limitation becomes even more pronounced, as I will demonstrate momentarily, and as Jayson Stark has noted and Jim Caple has discussed more specifically and fully.

So, to begin, let's revisit the ballot from a year ago.  Last year, the 10 names I would have chosen were Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Fred McGriff,  Barry Larkin, Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith, and Alan Trammell.  Had I had the option to vote for more than 10, I also would have included Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Juan Gonzalez, Edgar Martinez, Bernie Williams, and Ruben Sierra.

Of those names, Larkin was elected last year, while Juan Gonzalez and Ruben Sierra failed to garner at least five percent of the vote on last year's ballot, so each is now removed from the ballot.  The other 13 remain, and they are joined by 24 new players who have reached eligibility.  The newly eligible players include a long list of heavyweights, such as Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa.  To me, all six of those players belong, and the only one about whom I might even entertain doubts Schilling, though those doubts would be very slight, as I looked at his case a few years ago and determined that I found him worthy.

So, I'm adding six names to a ballot that would already have nine holdovers, and that's not even counting the other four I would have liked to have included last year as well as others new to this year's ballot whom I would like to include but for whom I know I wouldn't have room.  In other words, if there was ever a case for the 10-player limit being a problem, this year seems to show it.  I fear a few players who might otherwise have garnered five percent of the vote will fall off the ballot and thus lose eligibility (until they become eligible for the veterans' committee years from now or until the rules change), simply because of the numbers game.  And that is a problem, because while some might say a 10-player limit is good because it forces folks to make difficult decisions, I would argue that it excludes some views of what constitutes a Hall of Famer, like my view, and I would think that the point of having hundreds of voters is that among them we would find a smattering of different philosophies that, put together, create a consensus.  When some philosophies are already excluded, though they needn't be, we fail in gaining an adequate consensus. You know, it's kind of like how democracy is supposed to work ...

All of that said, then, if I had a ballot and, regretfully, could only vote for 10 players, this would, in rough order of my sense of their worthiness for induction, be my ballot:

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Craig Biggio
Mike Piazza
Mark McGwire
Sammy Sosa
Rafael Palmeiro
Fred McGriff
Tim Raines
Jeff Bagwell

Perhaps you may have already noticed that despite the fact that I mentioned earlier that I have determined Curt Schilling quite worthy, he's not on that list.  Simply put, there isn't room, and I couldn't justify him over any of the 10 names I've given, and there you go.  Someone I feel is very strongly worthy of induction would not even make my ballot.

Schilling would be number 11 on my list.  Numbers 12 and 13 are a bit heartbreaking, as number 12 Jack Morris came close last year and is in his next-to-last year of eligibility, and number 13 Dale Murphy is in his last year of eligibility.  Meanwhile, I would continue to want to vote for Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Edgar Martinez, and Bernie Williams, in roughly that order.  I now stand at 19 players for whom I would want to vote, and I still need to cover the remaining newly eligible players.

Among such players, the name that most jumps out at me is Kenny Lofton.  He's not a no- or little-doubter like the other six newly eligible players I've mentioned, but a look at his career numbers moves him quite comfortably onto the list of players for whom I'd want to vote, probably at number 14, right behind Dale Murphy.  So, that gives me 20 for whom I'd want to vote, with 17 more players to consider.

Among those remaining 17, two players who amassed more than 2,500 hits and whose resumes look otherwise good are Steve Finley and Julio Franco.  I'd put both of them in rather readily, and then we get to the hard part, and for that, I'd like to say that I erred a couple of years ago.  For the 2011 ballot, I indicated that Kevin Brown would be the first player off my list.  Soon thereafter, I changed my mind on that choice, and in retrospect, I think he belongs.  I say this now because in the end I think that Kevin Brown had a better career than the next player I'm considering, whose pitching career overlapped with Brown's quite a bit:  David Wells.  Wells for me is a very borderline case.  In a lot of ways, his career statistics aren't that far from those of Jack Morris, though I think things like more wins and lower ERA, among other factors, make Morris better, so I don't want to say Wells has as good of a case as Morris.  (For a glance at some of these stats as well as stats for everyone on this year's ballot, see here.)  In the end, the strongest things Wells has going for him are his 239 wins, his perfect game, and his persona.  I think it's just enough, though just barely, which puts me at a total of 23 players for my ballot.

The first one off the list this year is Reggie Sanders, who has some intriguing elements to his resume.  For instance, he's one of only a handful of players who both hit 300 home runs and stole 300 bases.  However, he barely crossed both of those plateaus, and with less than 1,700 hits and a batting average of .267, he doesn't make it.

Nor does Shawn Green, who inched over 2,000 hits (2,003 to be exact), drove in 1,070 runs, and hit more than 300 home runs in his career, all of which provided some basis for consideration but didn't add up to enough to make my list.

Sandy Alomar, Royce Clayton, Jeff Conine, and Ryan Klesko all also had resumes that provided the basis for a little bit of consideration.  So, too, did a trio of relievers -- Roberto Hernandez, Jose Mesa, and Mike Stanton -- who all had some interesting numbers and careers and for whom I did want to make an effort to consider because in general I think relievers are too easily overlooked and because in this particular case all three rank among the top 15 in MLB history in appearances, with Stanton second only to Jesse Orosco on that list.  Yet, in the end, none seemed to warrant inclusion.

Meanwhile, though I did glance at their statistics, Jeff Cirillo, Aaron Sele, Todd Walker, Rondell White, and Woody Williams received only very brief consideration before not making my list.

So, in all, though I could only vote for ten players (and, of course, I can't actually vote for any), I would want to vote for 23 if I had a Major League Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.

Stressing Education

Apparently, some folks at CNBC have come to the conclusion that being a university professor is the least stressful job heading into the year 2013.  As the piece that reaches this conclusion explains, "If you look at the criteria for stressful jobs, things like working under deadlines, physical demands of the job, environmental conditions hazards, is your life at risk, are you responsible for the life of someone else, they rank like 'zero' on pretty much all of them! ... Plus, they're in total control. They teach as many classes as they want and what they want to teach. They tell the students what to do and reign over the classroom. They are the managers of their own stress level."

As someone who is a university professor and who has had other jobs, I can say that this is ludicrous, and it's made even more ludicrous by the inaccuracies in the description.  I don't get to "teach as many classes as [I] want."  While I do have some input into what I will teach, I do not get to teach whatever I want.  I do not "reign over the classroom"; I do set rules, but I'm also obligated to follow rules set up by my university and college, and I don't simply "tell the students what to do." 

Meanwhile, the piece's stated "criteria for stressful jobs" appear to have been applied inadequately to my job.  I have plenty of deadlines, so I'm not sure where that comes from.  While, yes, I don't do heavy lifting or other tasks often designated as "physical demands" for hours on end, there are physical demands in my job that often go overlooked (until, for instance, as happened to me a couple of years ago, one develops back pain that lingers several months after a session of sitting at one's desk grading papers ... to meet a deadline, by the way ...)  In terms of environmental hazards, between 2007 and 2012, my campus office was in a building that suffered and continues to suffer from strong, persistent mold problems.  Perhaps you might think that's an anomaly, but then we might look around the country at the number of faculty members with offices in buildings in various states of disrepair while universities build sports facilities, new amenities, and other structures servicing non-academic priorities.

I could go on, and other have, such as this blog post that addresses CNBC's claim.  I also want to be clear, as I'm sure that I have to be, that I am not complaining.  I'm not suggesting that I don't like my job and that I wish I was doing something else.  Not at all.  Rather, I am attempting to suggest the inaccuracies of the assumptions that appear to have contributed to this CNBC piece, and I am attempting to challenge the misperceptions that might accompany such assumptions.

And it's on that level of misperceptions that I want to focus a little more fully, with a goal of suggesting what this might demonstrate about how teaching is popularly represented in American culture.  Namely, one of the criteria mentioned in this piece is being "responsible for the life of someone else," with the indication in the piece that this criterion applies little, if at all, to university professors.  I assume that this means that university professors aren't associated with saving or protecting lives in crisis moments.  For instance, if I were an EMT who responds to an automobile accident or a fire fighter who rescues people from a burning building, I'd then rank high for this criterion.  There is a difficulty in that connection.  After all, haven't many teachers faced situations in which we have been in a position to respond to students needed counseling, and we have directed them to the appropriate entities at our institutions to do so?  Maybe there's a qualitative and/or quantitative difference between that and the EMT/fire fighter examples, but my question does still seem worth noting.

Meanwhile, the context of "responsible for the life of someone else" seems even more worthy of note.  Even as we hear consistent calls for "accountability" in education -- calls that often get answered by approaches that demonstrate inadequate senses of what education entails (you know, stuff like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top) -- we continue to malign and devalue what teachers do.  When they seek to have some control over their working conditions and the standards by which they are evaluated, they are often portrayed as lazy miscreants hoping to live scot-free off others' money.  In prominent discussions of national security, tons of emphasis is placed on building weapons and using surveillance technologies, without real consideration of how better education systems might lead to a better and more secure society.  Recent discussions on guns in schools include proposals to arm teachers, put armed guards in schools, and the like, without adequate focus on helping our educational institutions have the means by which to help individuals of all sorts work within society rather than against it.

Hell, one of the most prevailing public perceptions is that teachers don't even do anything.  After all, as the saying goes, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  (And don't get me started on the problems of that particular bromide.)

What I'm getting at is that the CNBC piece suffers from what I think is a larger cultural problem in regard to education.  Rather than seeing education as vital to society -- as something that not only affects peoples lives, but does so in profound ways -- this piece, like so many other elements of contemporary U.S. culture, reflects a sense of education as a sort of easygoing, unstructured relatively low-impact set of exercises that might have a bit of value, but whose value is largely marginal.  Yet, education can do and mean so much more than that, and when we really invest ourselves in the process of educating, that meaning becomes so much more profound ... and, concurrently, so much more stressful.  After all, it now means something.  Why wouldn't it be stressful?

Perhaps there are university professors out there for whom this is a rather stress-free existence, but then again, there are likely EMTs, fire fighters, entrepreneurs, soldiers, athletes, appliance installers, and so on who fit that same bill.  Indeed, our culture is replete with examples of individuals in all kinds of fields -- even purportedly "stressful" fields -- who seem to have or take it easy in those fields.  Yet, for the many, many of us who take our jobs as university professors seriously, doing so also means quite a bit of stress.  How we structure a course might influence whether or not someone sees value in a field.  How we lead a discussion might help a student feel accepted and valued rather than marginalized.  How we offer comments on papers and how we cover course content might propel students to new insights and valuable connections or at least toward pursuing paths that might lead them to such insights and connections.

This can be -- and is -- wonderful, inspiring, rewarding, and all of those things, but in investing oneself into it in order to make that happen, one also realizes how much more it matters, and that means one acknowledges so much more the responsibilities one has in connection with the lives of others.  That, then, means stress.  And just as it seems so easy in contemporary U.S. society to recognize as leadership (rather than complaint) the soldier, the police officer, or the small business owner who acknowledges the stress of what he or she does, maybe it's time to do an even deeper job of recognizing the same about people who teach.  Unfortunately, this CNBC piece does just the opposite.

I Don't Have Time For This Bowl Crap

At 3:00 p.m. today, the institution at which I received my Bachelor's degree and at which I am currently employed will take the field for a college football bowl game as the Bowling Green State University Falcons will play the San Jose State University Spartans in the Military Bowl.  In past years, I would have already written a little bit on this blog about this bowl game, as it likely would have been at the top or near the top of my ranking of the season's college football bowl games in terms of how much watching each appeals to me. Like in previous years, that ranking would have offered an honest assessment of my interest and would have been meant to provide a counternarrative to the lists on major sports news websites that are dominated by games featuring teams from leagues that have automatic qualification for the BCS bowl games -- you know, those lists that reflect a perspective that correlates in some ways to the sentiment of outrage that was articulated when Mid-American Conference member Northern Illinois earned an invitation to one of the BCS games this year.

This year, there was no list because ... well ... there is no appeal to watching any of the games.  After deciding in August to give up college football, I have not watched a single moment of any college football bowl games this year, and I have no plans to watch any of them.  Thus, I offer no list.

I had thought about going through each of the 35 college football games and demonstrating a reason for not watching each one by pointing to some way in which one or both institutions place football in too powerful of a position, by pointing out a practice at one or both institutions that demonstrates the troubling ramifications of how football programs are run and/or financed, or by pointing out a troubling ramification of the bowl game itself.  It was easy to start seeing and finding examples for many games, but frankly, I didn't want to write the post up and scout out a link to an example to provide for every game.  College football doesn't warrant that much of my time.

So, instead, I'll just reiterate that sentiment.  My alma mater is playing in a college football bowl game today.  It's a bowl game that is problematic as a bowl game for some of its ramifications, as Michael Butterworth and Stormi Moskal have pointed out.  It's also featuring, in my alma mater, an institution that, amid a climate of concerns about rising tuition, already has its students on the hook for $50 a semester in a student fee to pay for the basketball arena that opened in 2011, yet, as reported in the Toledo Blade, members of the Board of Trustees for this institution attended a football game at the University of Akron this fall to "gain ideas for a renovation of Doyt Perry Stadium."

Yeah ... college football definitely doesn't warrant any more of my time.

Serving Up Christmas

I am not a Christian.  I do not belong or adhere to any particular set of religious beliefs.  Rather, as I have written on this blog, I found spiritual peace when I came to the conclusion that I neither believe nor disbelieve in God (or, for that matter, any particular religious perspective).  So, Christmas does not have particular meaning for me as a celebration of the birth of the son of God and the various significances that go with that.  Still, there would seem to be much of worth in the philosophies associated with Jesus, and so, as I have been contemplating that this year, I have come to the view that celebrating Christmas as a means of commemorating and reflecting upon those philosophies may have value.  That value, though, would seem to call for celebration of Christmas in a very different way than how so many of us currently celebrate it, and for that I'd like to contextualize it within other views of holidays that I have developed in recent years.

As I have indicated on this blog, I think we should rearrange some of the meanings we currently associate with winter holidays.  Thanksgiving should be removed, as it and its mythology of oppression have little meaning, or it should be changed to a National Day of Mourning.  I think the day of thanks that many now observe on Thanksgiving should be moved to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  A day celebrating those who have worked and sacrificed in the name of civil rights seems much more appropriate as a time at which to be thankful.  The day of giving gifts that we now celebrate on Christmas should be moved to New Year's Eve/Day. The time when we both look back at the past year and look forward to the next year seems like the appropriate time for gift giving and merriness.

Christmas, then, in this reconfiguration, would take over for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a day of service.  There certainly are good reasons to associate Martin Luther King, Jr., and civil rights with the theme of service, so it's not that I'm opposed to that connection (though there may be some problematic racial coding occurring when the concept of "service" is associated with the holiday that is most prominently associated with the contributions of racial and ethnic minorities).  It seems, though, that that holiday is much more appropriately themed as a time of thanks.  Meanwhile, the messages offered by Jesus seem to align so squarely with the concept of service and seem to have their most use to both Christians and non-Christians as they are associated with service that I think, at least insofar as we might wish to maintain Christmas as a holiday, we ought to make it the day of service.

With that in mind, I am making plans this Christmas to increase my forms of service this coming year, and I resolve each Christmas Day and/or Eve going forward to spend a few hours volunteering in some form of service capacity.  That seems so much more deeply in line with my understandings of Jesus than anything else I might do that day.