I was born in the middle of the Great Depression. My Dad was driving a tractor for one of the farmers in the Southern San Joaquin Valley of California. His pay was 18 cents per hour for a 10-12 hour day, that’s two bucks a day, or 12 U.S. dollars a week. That’s for six [...]
Our world is in what I would call “Cultural Chaos.” Whatever happened to “live and let live” or perhaps more accurately “be and let be?” I have been a keen observer of human behavior and the struggles involved since I was six years old. I have no scientific data or empirical proof my viewpoint. I [...]
It seems to me that people are overly critical of the authenticity of sports movies. Since most sports movies are about sports heroes, don’t you think producers are a bit handicapped in finding an actor who could perform with the athletic talent of people such as Babe Ruth, Gayle Sayers or even the minor league [...]
Hall of Fame basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian passed away this week after several years of struggling with his health. Rest easy my friend. The media has been telling us all week about his prowess as a coach and how he deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. Too bad they couldn’t do that years [...]
Not that it will make any difference, but I have a quarrel with media commentators and sports writers that can’t get further back than 20-25 years when referring to the all-time best performers (individuals, teams, etc.). Comparison’s are basically wasted motion because of the distance between performances, but being the best there is, whenever it [...]
This past week’s Sports Illustrated featured tonight’s football game for the National Championship between the University of Oregon and Ohio State University. It is the culmination of the first real playoff in Division I college football. In this issue there was another article, one by Seth Davis about someone I have always loved spending time [...]
Early on in life (4-10 years old), we are shocked by something that then has us decide something about ourselves. Usually, in some way we have a way to survive. As we get older we develop a way to fix our consistent reaction to anything that doesn’t work. That becomes our strong suit, i.e. the [...]
Coaches clearly know the value of practice. But, I am not as clear about their relationship to practice. They are freaked out when circumstances prevent a scheduled practice. Or, the team has a “bad” practice. Or, they worry did we have enough practice? The truth is that no one knows the perfect number of practices [...]
The past week’s Sports Illustrated cover story was “Homeless Athletes.” I don’t know the authors’ intent for sure and I am pretty sure that they wanted to create attention around a problem to cause something good to happen. There is nothing new or exceptional about this problem. It has been that way since I began [...]
I have questions. The first question I have is “where are we headed?” We live in a world that basically doesn’t work. We have territorial wars. We have religious wars. We have other ideological conflicts. It sounds like the world in 300 B.C. … so much for technology. We live in a world that is [...]