Elections again

The true cause is idol worship. Israelis worship the military like a god and want the Charedim to bow to that god. Why else the insistence that Charedim be drafted? There are already 18,000 soldiers too many. Because it's not fair? Is it fair that we keep Shabbos our whole lives and you party? Is it fair that the military is crafted in the image of Chiloni apikoris and arrogance? Hey Chiloni, how about you be a Toldos Aaron chossid for 2.5 years. That kind of culture clash is what you are demanding of us. You demand we join your culture, maybe you should join ours. How do you have three elections and none of the normal issues of a society get discussed: the economy, security, education, health. That's what normal societies talk about. The Mistake of Israel is not a normal society. It wasn't formed naturally as other societies are. It was formed as a rebellion against God and Torah. And so you get a political stalemate which is essentially all about the draft and a peacetime draft. There hasn't been war with another nation in 50 years but Israelis insist on the draft as if it were mesorah from Sinai. For them, it is mesorah, mesorah from Herzl, the man who wanted to convert all the Jews to Catholicism, mesorah from Ben Gurion, a self-professed atheist who according to Yeshayahu Leibowtiz hated religion more than any other person he had ever met, mesorah from Jabotinsky who was a fascist atheist. Choose your god Israel. Do you worship the Creator of heaven or earth or the Baal? It's one or the other.

A Little Respect Please

A Little Respect Please

From their broadcast studios, wearing fancy suits on loan from the TV networks, with their noses covered in powder to prevent sweat from shining up their foreheads under the studio lights, the sports analysts keep telling us that sports is all about championships and Michigan football hasn’t won any in modern history, which is the only history they seem to care about. “The most overrated program in history,” said one pundit. The disrespect Michigan is getting is off-putting.

It’s a strange notion that sports is all about championships. If that’s true, sports fans are fools because only one team wins every year. Sports viewing is a voluntary activity. Why would millions of people spend all that time if 95% of them are going to hang their heads in sorrow all through the offseason? Life presents enough sadness that we can’t escape. Why pay good money and spend precious time enduring more?

Now Michigan football has won national championships in modern history, which really should be defined as the AP era. It won in 1947 and it won a kind of protest symbolic post-bowl game national championship AP vote in 1948. It also won in 1997. The analysts keep calling the Lloyd Carr championship half a championship. If you win all your games, it is not half a championship. The NCAA, which also was not obsessed with national championships until the world turned rotten, didn’t have in those days a title game and a kind of way of determining an undisputed champion on the field. The AP voted for Michigan. That’s a full championship. The analysts keep talking about that exciting year as if the Michigan team and Coach Carr did something wrong. They won all their games fellas. What else can you do?

But that doesn’t even matter that much to me since I don’t watch sports to see my team become national champion. It’s nice to have one or two under your belt but I don’t need a dozen of them. I watch sports to be entertained and inspired. I want to see a good game, a competitive contest where people with enormous athletic skill, unlike me who has little, run really fast, jump very high, throw the ball very far, engage in dazzling feats of strength and footwork, and employ strategy and teamwork.

I love those moments just before the game begins, when the captains head out for the coin toss. They look so focused and determined. They are prepared for the contest. They are going to give it their best. And they do it as a unit, sometimes even holding hands! Hulking he-men holding hands in unity. How interesting. How unlike any place I ever worked. Something big must be happening out there in the field. How exciting. It gives my dull life a little voltage. That’s entertainment.

With college football in particular, I like the pageantry. I like cool uniforms and big stadiums and singable fight songs and mascots and excited fan bases. I like a team that stays in one place. Somebody tell me please, what’s an Indianapolis Colt? I’m sorry but Colts are from Baltimore.

College teams don’t move to better markets. Often, too often, they mess with the makeup of their league like when the Big Ten became the Big Thirteen and invited metro New York and DC onto the cow farm. I won’t complain about that right now. I take comfort that Badgers are from Wisconsin and Sooners are from Oklahoma. If that ever changes, I will stop watching altogether. I promise.

And speaking of Wisconsin, I like the rivalry with Wisconsin. I like the rivalry with MSU even more. I like the one with Minnesota too. There’s a lot of history there. I am entertained when Michigan goes up against Iowa. Leather helmets flash before my eyes. I see Neil Kinnock racing one way and Tom Harmon racing the other. Michigan has won many rivalry games and lost many and has entertained me most of the time. The contemporary sports analysts only seem to care when #1 plays #2. I like it when an unranked Illinois plays an unranked Purdue. It’s Midwestern football baby with or without your rankings. I love it. I care more about the Big Ten championship than a national one. I’m serious. And Michigan football has won plenty of those. Big Ten football baby. 

There’s always been an inherent problem with college football national championships even under the current system as sports writers and coaches historically have had a significant role in determining the winner or currently who plays to be the winner. Even if their choices are reasonable ones, the process is not very exciting except to themselves. 

Championships in any sport leave me with an empty feeling after a few days. I’m not into conquest I guess. Plus, what did I do? I watched passively. Maybe I added my voice to the crowd, one of 105,000. A good sports story is much more meaningful to me. It is not hollow when athletes inspire me to go about my life with more passion. That’s what Michigan football did for me this year as they had some trouble early on and heard all kinds of abuse but roused themselves and played like tigers the rest of the season. So they lost to OSU. Who hasn’t? And if they come back from that loss and play like tigers against Alabama in the Citrus bowl they will have inspired me again. Thank you boys.

The college football championship is doubly empty because much of it happens not on the playing field but in the calculations and biases of people who are not on the field. In college football, to win the national championship, a team usually needs a perfect record. Three of the four teams playing in the playoffs this year all have perfect records and style points on top of that, meaning they shamefully beat up on weaker teams. We are talking about college kids here folks. Young people aren’t perfect and their time is better spent rising from defeat than trying never to stumble. It’s more inspiring anyway, to watch a team get up after a defeat than being perfect. And smacking down weaker teams deep into the third quarter doesn’t help young men to build character.

One can learn much character playing sports if the coaches handle it right. Sports are full of lessons for life, even for fans. People who don’t understand sports think it’s all dumb jocks. But I have learned a ton from sports. From baseball legend Yogi Berra I learned that in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is. I don’t know if Yogi is even the originator of that brilliant quip, but I heard it from him. From sports I learned the term “mental toughness.” I saw the clip of Orlando Magic basketball player Matt Barnes faking an in-bounds pass towards Kobe Bryant’s head and Kobe not even blinking. The announcer said, you are not going to get into the head of Kobe Bryant. What a concept, not letting people in your head, not letting people intimidate you. I learned that from sports. I learned from NY Yankee Derek Jeter to slow down the game in my mind, to not fear failure, and to remember times I have been successful. I learned from Wisconsin quarterback Scott Tolzien to take it one play at a time, not to try to do too much, and to focus on my job. I learned from hockey legend Wayne Gretsky that I will miss 100% of the shots I don’t take.

I do try to limit my sports viewing because I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. But I find Michigan football irresistible because it provides all that I seek from sports. It always fields decent teams. Michigan football is as consistent as a workhorse. It finds superior athletes. It shows up for games. It has a terrific uniform, one that was voted by sports fans as the best in all of sports. It has one of the classic stadiums in all of sports. It has a rousing fight song, a spirited fan base, and historic rivalries. The one with Ohio State is often voted as the best in all of sports. So lately it’s been one-sided? For those who know any history, the game count is still has Michigan leading 58–51–6. Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields said, “I think we just take it more seriously than they do. We prepare for it all year.” Now that’s a rivalry. The sports analysts just see wins and losses. OSU and Michigan players see an on the field onslaught among rivals.

As for values and life lessons, Michigan football packs a wallop. I have a book on leadership from Bo Schembechler. Bo’s Lasting Lessons. It is so packed with wisdom that I have read it ten times. It is an amazing book. I’d wouldn’t exchange that book for 10 national championships. He says to honor the seniors - starters and backups - for that inspires the underclassmen to stick it out and do their best. One day they’ll be the seniors. Seniors fly first class. Underclassmen and coaches fly coach. He says to seek mentors not money and to listen before you lead. The book is chock full of wholesome wisdom that in our disturbed era is rarely heard or found.

Another Michigan coach who has taught me life lessons is Brady Hoke. Brady Hoke takes a lot of abuse for his tenure at Michigan even though his first year was full of big wins. As his days at Michigan were coming to an end, he endured what must have been significant personal embarrassment. A sportswriter, one of the sensible ones - a lady sportswriter actually - was asked about how he was reacting to it. She said, he’s taking it rather stoically. Indeed, he carried himself with dignity, absent of any public expressions of bitterness or blame. Thank you coach Hoke. What a lesson for life. Take it stoically. My goodness, what an incredible example you set. I have been trying to imitate that ever since I witnessed you doing it.

At Michigan, it’s not all about victory. We care about values, something sports analysts today with their big salaries know little about evidently. If you go to Stassen.com and look over the historic records of various teams, you’ll find an awful lot of vacated victories. In 2005, Alabama vacated all ten victories due to a textbook scandal. In 2006, they vacated all six wins; in 2007 the first five wins. In 2010, Ohio State vacated twelve wins due to playing ineligible players. In 2005, USC vacated all twelve wins due to NCAA violations along with two wins from the prior year. In 2006, Florida State vacated five wins and in 2007 all seven wins. 

Nothing like that appears on the Michigan page. The winningest program of all time has never been forced to vacate a victory. The football team has been clean of major scandal. It appears to be clean even of minor scandal, except for the time that non-Michigan man Rich Rodriguez was cited by the NCAA for exceeding practice limits. He still disputes the citation saying, “"We got in trouble for, in the offseason, a strength coach putting a rubber ball on a stick for a get-off thing when (players) did their running. A rubber ball on a stick.”

The sum of the matter is that the sports analysts need to learn a little respect, but they probably never will. They can go on pontificating from Manhattan Island with the East River floating behind their heads. I grew up in New York. There was little interest in college football there. Why are so many of the decisions about the sport and so much of the analyses made about it made on Manhattan Island? Like the Rock n’Roll Hall of Fame, news programs discussing college football should be based in Ohio or at least Alabama or Indiana or Michigan. Even Southern California would be a more appropriate choice because there is meaningful interest in college football there.

I had my suspicions that creating a national championship playoff system was going to have its drawbacks and the cheapening of the game is one of them. Michigan football has much of which to be proud, has contributed mightily to college football, and will continue to do so. Many of the analysts don’t get it. But to reapply a line from the old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “I hope the sports writer will remember, a Michigan man doesn’t need him around anyhow.”