Jack’s Blog

Controversy has struck Fresno.  It seems as though, with all the problems Fresno State (and the rest of us) have, changing the look of the mascot somehow moved its way to the top of the list.  The new “Time Out” has set off a debate on which is better - the old, beloved version or the new & improved one.

The main question I have isn’t whether the new mascot is better or worse than the old one, but why would someone even spend time discussing it?  I imagine the old mutt needed a new uni & someone brought up the idea of a makeover.  In an area so bent on tradition, why risk upsetting the Gray Red Wave?  People here are noted for being somewhat set in their ways and, unless a change is a major improvement, e.g. something to increase revenue, wouldn’t it a more prudent use of time to discuss how to increase ticket sales, involve more people in fund raising efforts, improve facilities, or almost anything besides, “How about a new mascot?”  Unless it’s just about putting someone’s own stamp on the athletics department, why make waves?

It brings to mind the statement:

“There is no progress without change…but not all change is progress.”

Last night I had homecoming duty.  The crowd at the football game, while not overflowing, was quite respectable - the home side of the stadium nearly full with a large majority of current or former students.  However, a great many of these “fans” seemed hardly interested in the game.

In fact, after noticing a student of mine had been talking to a group of her friends for an extended period of time, I mentioned to her that if she’d turn around, she’d see there was actually a football game going on.  She looked at me and innocently said, “What?” as if she didn’t care if Cirque du Soleil was performing behind her.  That wasn’t the reason she was where she was at that particular moment anyway.

How foolish of me to think people go to football games to cheer for the team representing their school (note that she was not wearing the road jersey of one of the players as several other girls were) - or even watch the game.  The reason many people attend events like these can be explained by William James, who said long ago, and still holds true today:

“The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

80% of the classes I teach are algebra I, consisting mostly of freshmen.  I’ve always had the feeling that math is a subject in which you can be “born good.”  I’m living proof.  There was nothing I did as a youngster to become proficient in math, yet, somehow, I got it.  Lucky for me, too, because I really couldn’t say that about myself in any other segment of academia.

In our school district, the very top math students in junior high take algebra I as 7th graders and geometry as 8th graders, so by the time they’re freshmen, they’re taking algebra II.  Then there’s the next wave of students who take algebra I as 8th graders and, if they score high enough, take geometry as freshmen.  I get the next group who, while they are, by and large, solid college prep students (even brilliant in some areas), many just don’t like math.  A fairly high percentage of them are, however, into sports. 

For anyone who knows me, or who has frequented this blog, it will come as no shock to hear that I use stories when I’m teaching.  One that I use every year is that math is easier than sports.  “No way!” is usually the response I get greeted with when I make that statement.  I, then, explain how, in math, nobody’s playing defense on you (team sports) i.e., while you’re reading the problem, there’s no one waving their hands in your face, trying to distract you and when you put your pencil to the paper, nobody’s slapping at your hand (or worse).  In the case of individual sport athletes, if you work hard and do the best you can, you’ll nearly always get the problems right, i.e. there’s no first place, runner up, etc.  Everybody’s a winner, independent of who got it first or with the fewest steps.  You’re truly rewarded for hard work.

Of course, in this day and age of skepticism, there are some non-believers, but you’d be surprised at how many of them, realizing that, although they may have a dislike for the subject, or struggle to understand it, can see that paying attention, doing the homework, asking questions and, in some cases, getting some extra help can result in success in an area they’d never thought they’d find it.  Others have tried to get the kids to like math; I’ve tried this approach and it works as well as most anything else I’ve attempted. 

Possibly the reason there’s been some success with this strategy is I’ve kept in mind what the poet, e.e. cummings, said:

“The hardest fight a person has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you be someone you don’t want to be.” 

As many people from my generation did, I played three sports in high school, the Big 3, as they were known back then - football, basketball and baseball.  I was a decent athlete but, even at a young age, I was more of a coach than a player.

I enjoyed the nuances of the various sports nearly as much as I did playing them.  Upon graduating college, I was fortunate to receive a call from my former high school football coach, who was also the athletics director, asking me if I wanted to come back and teach math and coach a couple sports.  Keep in mind, this was at a time when college graduates, especially those holding a low draft numbers (I was in the original draft lottery and, lucky me, my number was 53) were desperate to find a job (other than one in Vietnam).

Naturally, I accepted.  When your football coach suggests it would probably be a good idea to limit coaching to two sports rather than three and then asks which two would you like, he really means which other sport besides football would you be interested in coaching.  I picked basketball and I remember my old baseball coach telling me how disappointed he was I didn’t choose baseball, that he always thought I’d be a good baseball coach.  I always loved baseball strategy.

Several years later, I was a graduate assistant basketball coach at Washington State and my roommate was a grad assistant in baseball to the legendary coach, Chuck “Bobo” Brayton.  He was playing an audiotape recording in our apartment that Bobo had done on the art of being a catcher, an area for which he was noted as a genius.  I realized that, while I hadn’t been out of baseball for that long a period of time, how technical anything done properly at that level is.

This long preamble is due to my listening to talk radio on the way home from school today (I ran out of audiobooks) and hearing some random guy criticizing the play calling of the 49ers.  I laughed as I thought of how this self-proclaimed wizard of the call-in would feel if he were in a staff meeting of the Niners’ coaches.  His head would spin!

Many times I’ve heard people, players, coaches, commentators and fans alike make the statement, “Hey, it’s not brain surgery.”  Anytime that line comes up, I remember talking to a huge University of Tennessee fan who happens to be a brain surgeon.  One day, he and I had a conversation following a couple of close losses we’d suffered.  I said to him, “I’m so frustrated - because we lost, thinking about what we could have done, trying to figure what we need to do to get doing in the right direction when I think of how hard - and important - your job is.”  He looked at me and smiled before he said, “It’s what I’m trained to do and I don’t find it that hard.  After all, it’s not coaching.”  Great surgeon with a good sense of humor - winning combination.

That’s when I realized the toughest part of coaching is not the decisions you make (or in the case of football coaches, the play calling).  It’s whether you win or lose.  Because:

“Success has many parents while failure is an orphan.”¼/p>

Our older son begins college next week at the University of California, Irvine - at which time, I guess, he officially becomes an anteater.  Attending a school as big and diverse as UCI is certain to initiate some trepidation as to how he’ll measure up.

Each school in the UC system is noted for academic excellence, so it would seem only natural for him to wonder, with so many new faces, where exactly does he fit in on the “intelligence chain.”  His grades were exemplary at Clovis West (over a 4.0 GPA, including 5 AP classes), but so were the grades of all the other kids he knows who are enrolling at UCI this year.

I’m sure, even though he’s a pretty well-grounded kid with a solid self-image, he’s wondering what kind of social life awaits him - and will it be everything he’s hoping for.  Even on the sports scene, I’ve warned him that there will be several highly talented athletes competing in intramurals.  Every one of his coaches, from youth soccer and Little League baseball to elementary, junior high and high school basketball, have emphasized the importance of an intense work ethic.  Come to think of it, I’ve mentioned it a time or two myself.  In that area, he’ll be fine, but you never know about the competition and the level of their desire.  Inevitably, comparisons to others will abound.

How he’ll do is something he, as well as every other entering freshman, will find out soon enough, but when it comes right down to it, the advice I’ll give him is something I picked up long ago:

“The only true measure of success is how you do compared to your own potential.”      ¼/p>

I’m on record (many times over) as being on the flip side of the  so-called “N-Generation.”  What’s currently going on is progress at warp speed, or so the computer whizzes tell us.

What I see are inventions like “text messaging,” “myspace” and “facebook” that, admittedly, I don’t understand (hell, I’m just now figuring out email), but might be potentially dangerous.  I’m not talking about just the obvious problems like child predators.  It’s that these new “communication” vehicles are so addictive (sort of like television was when I was growing up, I guess).  Well, we somehow got through it and I imagine (pray, really, since I have two sons who do understand the new technology) that we and our kids will get through this as well.

My biggest concern with all this, because of the “attention control” they have, is the kids no longer do things like read.  Yeah, same argument we got regarding the “boob tube,” but I’d have to admit that even though I now love to read, my generation (Baby Boomers) did not read nearly as much as the generation that preceeded us.  The current generation is reading exponentially less than we did.  When do they have the time if they’re sending 1,000-1,500 text messages per month and spending hours (from the time they get home until they go to bed) in front of the computer?

I do believe today’s generation is smarter than ours and, mainly because of the internet, are  certainly much more aware than we ever were.  What frightens me, despite of the new found technological knowledge, is the obvious truth of the line:

“The person who doesn’t read is no better than the person who can’t read.”

A colleague of mine asked me if I was going to do a blog on, for lack of a scientific term, “senior moments.”  She was referring to memory loss. e.g. attending a meeting you’ve been to a hundred times in the past, yet not being able to remember details (large and small) the next day, or going from one room to another, but when you get there, forgetting what the purpose of getting there was.

After careful consideration, I decided to blog about another “old age” problem - that of losing weight.  My weight hasn’t been ideal for some time now, but I notice it’s getting more and more difficult to lose the excess.  When I was in my 30’s, it was no problem when I saw I was a few pounds over where I wanted to be (really what I’d settle for; “wanted to be” would have meant taking off a good deal more than I was prepared to do), a few hard workouts, a few more “push-aways”   (from the dinner table) and my goal was reached.

In my 40’s, a little tougher, but still do-able.  The 50’s brought on more weight and what seems to be a near impossibility to, not only take off what I’d like, but, independant of the workout regimen, the scale is going in the opposite direction! 

I must come clean on a few things: 1) I love eating (some people eat to live, I live to eat), 2) because of 1), I refuse to turn food into medicine (my wife refuses to understand that I don’t like salmon - no matter how good it is for you), and 3) although I don’t dislike working out, most anything will sidetrack me from doing so and if I’m not working out with somebody else, I’ll find some reason to put it off.

To me, what it comes down to is the United Negro College Fund has it backwards.  The saying for me is:

              “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”

I teach Algebra 1 to (mainly) high school freshmen.  In my room, I have, as you would expect if you’re a frequent reader of this blog (or even if you just know me), inspirational and humorous quotes plastered all over the wall.

As far as family items, I’ve always felt I didn’t want to turn my room into a shrine, but a picture of each of my sons wouldn’t violate that policy.  Two years ago, I decided to try a very unscientific experiment.  I’ve worked at the Michael Jordan Flight School (basketball camp) for each of the past 5 or 6 years and one of the “perks” you get (beyond a generous stipend) is a picture with MJ.

The reason I waited until two years ago to conduct this experiment is it was at that time, going through some old pictures that I uncovered a photo of Ronald Reagan and me.  It was taken in the early ’90s - turned out that the former pres was a closet SC fan and after our basketball team had beaten UCLA for something like the 4th time in 5 games, his secretary called and invited the team to his Century City office for a visit and photo op.

The above mentioned experiment was that I’d put the pictures side by side (MJ and me & Dutch and me) on my cabinet.  Then, I’d wait to see the reactions I got from the students.  Although I never formally tallied the comments, I’d say for every student who said, “Wow, you knew a president!” there were 20 who said, “You know Michael Jordan?” 

I have to say, being an admitted old timer, it does bother me that kids don’t see how awesome it would be to be shake the hand of a former leader of the free world, but would swoon when thinking they could be in that close proximity to a sports star, even if that star is the greatest player ever and transcends the sport.  I was going to illustrate to the youngsters my feelings about that.

However, posted on the wall next to the pictures are the California Standards for algebra, and getting the kids proficient in those is what I’m hired to do, so I figured I’d take William James’ advice:

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” ¼/p>

Watching the Emmys, I could only think, “How do we really know when the winner gets up & says (s)he has nothing prepared, if (s)he really does or if (s)he’s acting?”  After all, the winner symbolizes the best.

And when the camera shows the nominees who didn’t win, and they’re all smiling and applauding the winner, are they sincere or are they thinking they got screwed and can’t wait until they get hold of their agents - because they have to complain to somebody and what are they paying that 10% for anyway?

When some of the winners get up and deflect the credit, thanking everyone else, they’re kidding, right?  As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said years ago:

         “Don’t be so humble.  You’re not that great.”¼/p>

When Appalachian State beat Michigan on college football’s opening weekend of the 2007 season, studio commentator and former coach Lou Holtz said the reason was because App State spread their offense out almost the width of the field, had a quarterback who could run and was an accurate passer and they had a wide receiver with quickness who could create yards after he caught a pass.

On Saturday, in a marquis matchup between Florida and Tennessee, in what was supposed to a relatively close game turned into a rout.  Color commentator Gary Danielson made a statement that I found astounding.  As a former football coach, albeit one from nearly 40 years ago, and a former color commentator, much more recently, I’m certain I pay more attention to color commentators and studio shows than my fellow coach potatoes.  Danielson, who had a solid, but not spectacular, career as an NFL quarterback, said, as Coach Urban Meyer’s Florida offense was shredding a Volunteer defense that, prior to the game, was considered somewhat of a strength, “In 10 years, 95% of the teams in the country will be using this offense.”  For the record, it’s same offense Appalachian State uses.

I’m not absolutely sure of the numbers as it was a line spoken during “filler time” in a game that had lost its drama - maybe he said 5 years, maybe he said 90% - but that statement, coupled with Holtz’s from the Michigan-Appy State game, is a bombshell.

Coaches, especially football coaches, are notorious copy cats.  Heretofore, everyone thought Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense had revolutionized the game.  Urban Meyer, to my knowledge, is considered the “genius” (using the term with apology to the late Walsh), behind this offensive scheme, which takes the West Coast to another level.  He started at Bowling Green, then went to Utah, and now is at Florida, and has had similar success at each team he’s led, the level of it rising as the level of football played at each school, i.e. low- major, mid-major, BCS.

I’ve always admired the philosophy of J. Paul Getty, who used to say, “Buy when they’re selling and sell when they’re buying.”  Urban Meyer’s version of the Getty Principle is:

“The future is not something we enter.  The future is something we create.”