Forward: Wow. I am putting out my August letter at the end
of September. I cannot speak for any of
the readers, but I am astonished at this.
I have been very good for ten plus years of getting the letter out in
the month that it represents.
What are the reasons for
this? Clearly, it has been other
priorities. The reasons are tied to one
of the two topics in this letter, the start of the school year, and the AYF Olympics.
I started a new, full tima e,
faculty position at North Park University.
I am teaching four courses, three of them for the first time which
requires a lot of prep time. It was
easily my top priority.
The August letter might have been
posted in the closing days of August:
Labor Day Weekend. I certainly
wrote a lot that weekend, but everything I wrote was about the AYF Olympics. I posted articles to the online edition summarizing every day of festivities from Thursday, August 28th to Tuesday, September 2nd.
It was a lot of fun taking photos
all weekend and reporting on the Olympics festivities. I enjoyed the weekend even more reporting on
it… but it left no time to write this letter.
Between the start of school and
the AYF Olympics, I have not had the time to dedicate to getting this letter
out. Sometimes, priorities force
trade-offs and, as the Clint Eastwood character said in Heartbreak Ridge, “we adapt,
modify, and overcome.” I did adapt and
modify my schedule. I am in the process
of overcoming. Part of this involves
putting out the August and September letters within a few days.
The first day of school is a special time. To me, from the day I started kindergarten
until today when I am a professor, the first day of school is more like the
beginning of a new year than any January 1 I have ever experienced. The first day of school is more like the
beginning of a new year than the first day of any fiscal year I have ever
experienced. The first day of school is
important to many families. I have to
believe the importance I put on the first day of school has to put me in the top
few percentile points in this regard.
I have to attribute and credit
this to my mother and grandmother. From
as early as I can remember, my mother and grandmother emphasized the importance
of an education. In fact, the way they
talked and encouraged me about school was more than just importance. They made it more of a mission with almost
religious overtones and undertones. They
would refer to my paternal grandfather and great uncle as examples I should
aspire to. This is not to mean this is
all they talked about or emphasized. It was not. They were not at all over the top but when
they did talk about the value and importance of education, it was in this
special way.
The other part of this equation is
me. My mother and grandmother emphasized
more than education. They advocated
devotion to family and nation, humility, the golden rule, and sound money
management to name a few. These all
resonated with me but all paled in comparison to education. Education appealed to me. It clearly was something innate. So, the motivation was both intrinsic and
extrinsic. No wonder, the first day of
school is such a special time for me.
The first day of school is like
the first day of baseball season. It is
full of hope and unlimited potential. As
a kid on opening day, there was always great hope and possibility that the
Detroit Tigers were going to win the pennant and World Series. Similarly on the first day of school, there
was no limit to what I would learn in English, history, and especially
science. It was all full of hope,
potential, and magic.
These feelings were amplified by
getting and organizing new school supplies.
Brand new, pristine, bright, and shiny binders, notebooks, pencils,
pens, crayons, rulers, and loose leaf paper contributed significantly to the
hope, potential, and magic of the school year that was about to start. A notebook of blank pages combined with brand
new pencils and pens. It was possible
that these pages might be filled with a world class novel or perhaps the proof
of Fermat’s Last Theorem. There was no
limit to what I imagined was possible.
Of course, be the second week,
school was much more like a job than it was a hopeful and magical thing. By the second grade I realized the magicof
the start of school would most certainly dissipate once the work load got into
full swing. Even with that knowledge,
there was no way to stop that euphoria of the new beginning. For that reason, it is exactly like the start
of a new baseball season.
August 25: It was the first
day of school today. It was the first
day of school for my daughter Armene, a first grade teacher, as well. She sent us a text and photo : “1st day of school obligatory picture
:)” I have been getting first day of
school photos from her from her first day of kindergarten. They are more meaningful to me than most of
her official class photos taken a few weeks after class started. Armene used to be excited to take the first
day of school photos pretty much through elementary school. In middle school, high school, and college, I
had to coax her to take the photo. Being
the great sport she is and knowing it meant a lot to me, she took cute, parody,
photos.
She thought she was done when she
graduated from college. But, as she
chose teaching as her profession, she still continued to have first days of
school. I thought it quite natural to
continue asking for the photos.
“Really?” she said. I didn’t say
anything. I must have had that “you’ll
always be my little girl” look, so she complied that year and every year since
without another word or look. It is
often the little things that contribute to the strongest bonds and fondest
memories.
On Facebook today, one of my first
and favorite North Park students, Lindsay Synek, posted the following: “Today’s my last first day of school… Where
did time go.” I am not so sure Lindsay,
don’t be so quick to say it is over.
Graduate school, teaching, and coaching may be in future… not to mention
a puppy dog look from you Dad someday.
With one grandson born and another
due in December, I can see this first day of school photo tradition continuing
a long time and that would be very fine for me.
Football Season: It was
silly to equate the first day of school with opening day in baseball. While it was a good analogy, I should have
equated the first day of school with the beginning of college football…
especially given that the beginning of the college football season was my
second topic.
With the first day of school comes
another beginning full of hope and very high expectations: the college football season begins. Die-hard fans all over the country are
quietly or quite openly expecting great things from their teams even if
somewhere deep down they know they are rooting for a cellar dweller. Until the first game is played, every time
has the same record, and some chance of winning a conference or national
championship.
Michigan has not been a great era
for Michigan Football. They have not
been the team the alumni and fan base have come to expect for the past few
years. Lloyd Carr was the head coach
from 1995 through the 2007 season. He
had six seasons in which he won ten games or more. His teams finished ranked in the AP top 20
every year except for 2005 when the team was 7-5. Let us not forget that Lloyd Carr’s 1997 won
the first National Championship in like fifty years. In his final game, the 2008 Capital One Bowl,
the Wolverines took it too Urban Meyers and the Florida Gators. He retired or was urged to retire because he
was on a losing streak against Jim Tressel and Ohio State and there was a
general feeling that the modern no huddle spread offense game had passed the
coach by.
Michigan squares off against
Appalachian State on Saturday August 30th for the first game of this
season. The last time Michigan played
them was in the opener of the 2007 season which was Carr’s last season. A good Appalachian State running a no huddle
spread offense upset the Wolverines. It
was an embarrassing loss. That loss did
more to secure Carr’s departure and for the school to hire Rich Rodriguez who
had made his name at West Virginia with exactly the kind of offense.
So, Michigan made a change first
for Rich Rodriguez and then Brady Hoke.
It has not been for the better.
In the Rich Rod era, Michigan was 15-22. We had two losing seasons which we were
definitely not used to or prepared for.
We did not tolerate those years very well. His three winning seasons were of seven and
eight games. His first two seasons, the
losing seasons, sealed his fate. We were
looking for the second coming of Bo and he was not it.
We thought Brady Hoke might be,
especially when in his first season he went 11-2 which included a Sugar Bowl
victory over Virginia Tech. His next two
seasons were more like Rich Rod’s last few years. We were 8-6 in 2012 and 7-6 in 2013. Rich Rod’s record improved every year. Hoke’s has gotten worse. An August 21, 2014 Sports Illustrated article
stated the situation perfectly, “When you go 7-6 at Michigan, people just
assume you are clueless.” Hoke is
clearly in the hot seat.
Michigan opened up against
Appalachian State on August 30. This was
only the second time these teams played each other. The first time they played, Appalachian State
shocked Michigan by beating us 34 – 32. It
set a horrible tone for the rest of Michigan’s season that year and definitely
contributed to the retirement of Lloyd Carr.
This time Michigan routed them 52 – 14 racking up 560 yards of offense
to their 280.
Clearly, there was great hope for a great Michigan Football season at
the time this was written. More to
follow, for sure, in the September letter.
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