August 2015: Ohio State's Excellent Quarterback Problem

Braxton Miller, J. T. Barrett, and Cardale Jones
http://blacksportsonline.com 

      Football season is upon us yet again.  The pro camps are commencing and college media days are taking place.  It all makes me want to write about college football.  And oddly, I want to write about Ohio State.
      I am not an Ohio State fan.  Not by any means.  I am a Michigan fan and they are our great rival.  I do believe that there can be no rival without the rival and that both teams need to win about fifty percent or so to make the rivalry exciting.  Michigan has not been holding up our side of this bargain. Our latest hope is on our new coach John Harbaugh.  Michigan fans are pretty excited to the point of believing that "we're back to the glory days."  I am excited but a little reserved about making any sweeping grandiose claims since we have not even played a game yet and I got over excited by the two previous coaches .   This piece, however, is not about Michigan.  It is not about the rivalry with Ohio State.  It is simply about Ohio State and something, from my perspective, that is very unique and amazing going on down there in Columbus.
     The Buckeyes had something special going on when they hired Jim Tressel.  He won a national championship and beat Michigan regularly.  He was a great recruiter and good coach but left in disgrace given with what I will simply call the Terrelle Pryor incident.  Luke Fickell became the interim coach for a year in which the Buckeyes were uncharacteristically mediocre.  He was holding the job for Urban Meyer who took over in 2012.  Meyer has only lost three games in his tenure in Columbus and won a National Championship last year; the first year of the playoff system.
     I felt a tingle of admiration for the Buckeyes when they kept Luke Fickell as Defensive Coordinator after Urban took over.  I was impressed how they took care of their own.  Meyer could have easily insisted on bringing in his own guy.  I am not often impressed by anything Ohio State does.  But, I had to tip my hat to them on this one.
     Last year, when they won the National Championship, they used their second and third string quarterbacks all season.  Their starting quarterback was to be Braxton Miller.  He was a pre-season Heisman hopeful.  He was a great mobile college quarterback that was a better runner than a passer.  He reminded me of the great Texas quarterback Vince Young.  He was electrifying, deceptively fast, and routinely shredded defenses with both running and passing.  When he went down in the pre-season, most wondered how the Buckeyes would fare without their star quarterback.
     Ohio State began the season with J. T. Barrett, their second stringer, at quarterback.  They beat Navy 34-17 in their first game and then lost their home opener against Virginia Tech 35-21.  At this point, there was a general consensus that the Buckeyes were going to struggle the rest of the season.  Everyone who thought that was wrong including me.  J. T. Barrett, as it turns out, is a very good quarterback.  He was a better passer than a runner and he was a pretty awesome runner.  After the Virginia Tech loss, Barrett led them to nine consecutive wins putting a lot of points on the board.  Commentators were saying he might even be better than Braxton Miller.  He was definitely a much better passer.  In the last regular season game, Barrett was orchestrating a win against Michigan when he suffered a season ending broken ankle in the first play of the fourth quarter.
     With the score being Ohio State 28 and Michigan 21, the Michigan hopeful were actually thinking we might have a chance to win with Ohio State having their third string QB in the game:  some guy named Cardale Jones.  Well... on his next series it was second and fifteen and this third stringer rips off eighteen yards and looked like the best power back on the field doing it.  He continued on from there to seal the win against Michigan.
      Cardale Jones played the remainder of the season.  The Buckeyes stomped Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship game.  They were then selected as one of the four teams in the first ever NCAA Football Playoff Series.  Their first game was against Alabama who they beat 42-35 and then convincingly beat Oregon, with the Heisman Trophy winning Quarterback Marcus Mariota, 42-20.  The buzz was now that Cardale Jones was the best of the three... and it was hard to argue.  He ran like a tailback and passed, to me, like Ben Rothlisberger.
      They won a National Championship basically with their second and third string quarterbacks.  That is a significant accomplishment.  Take any of the top teams that were given a shot at the national title at the beginning of the season.  Then if someone were to tell you their first string quarterback would go down before the season, the second string quarterback would start the 12 regular season games only to get hurt in the 12th game, and any postseason would be using the third string quarterback.  Would anyone think this team be it Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Auburn, Baylor, Texas, or Ohio State would have any hope of even winning their conference let alone win a National Championship?  Very few people would answer affirmative to such a question.
      Yet, Ohio State, Michigan's nemesis, did just that.  Wow.  Unbelievable.
      I discussed that with my colleague in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University:  Professor Chris Hubbard.  Chris knows what he is talking about since he teaches leadership and played Division 1 football at Bowling Green as a tailback.  He said it was the Urban Meyer system.  While I agreed that the coaching and management system is important and Urban Meyer has a very good system, there was also a degree of luck involved in having three quarterbacks of that caliber on one team.  There are many coaches with good systems.  Nick Saban immediately comes to mind.  I do not know if Alabama would have won their conference if they had had to use their third string quarterback to do it.  We finally agreed the both the system and luck had something to do with it.
      It was most impressive what Ohio State did.  But, that is not why I am writing about them.  I am writing because all three quarterbacks are returning to Columbus.  That to me is even more amazing then anything.  The buzz was that Cardale Jones was probably going to be the starter.  This led to speculation that Braxton Miller and perhaps even J. T. Barrett might leave Ohio State to ensure a starting position elsewhere.  There was even talk of Cardale Jones opting to go pro.  None of this happened.  All three agreed to stay at Ohio State.   In this day and age of giant egos and doing best for oneself versus the team, that is even a bigger wow to me.
      Quarterbacks transferring schools has become commonplace in the past few years.  Russell Wilson transferred to Wisconsin from North Carolina State.  For the 2015 season, Evert Golson transferred from Notre Dame to Florida State and Jake Rudock transferred from Iowa to Michigan.  Some Michigan hopeful wanted to see Braxton Miller don the winged helmet, as if that was ever going to happen.
     So, why have all three of these talented quarterbacks decided to stay at Ohio State?  Any agent or financial/career advisor would have had to tell all three that their professional prospects would be heightened if they were the starter at Ohio State... or elsewhere.  I would have expected at least one of them to transfer.  But, it didn't happen.
     I asked the same question to a college coach I recently met.  He reminded me that all three players are well compensated and this contributed to their staying in Columbus.  I do not buy into this for the following reasons.  First, if there is under the table compensation, that is probably available wherever Jones, Barrett, or Miller might have considered transferring to.  Second, as argued above, their potential professional compensation would easily overshadow whatever college level compensation they are getting... especially if they were starters.   So, this line of reasoning made no sense to me.
      What makes sense, and is the astonishing part, is that they have loyalty to Ohio State and loyalty to Urban Meyer and his system.  Assuming they are making decisions based on self-interest, each quarterback believes that staying at Ohio State is their best career move even if they are not the starter.  There is something powerful and magic going on in Columbus.  Perhaps when I post this piece, others will provide theories that are more plausible than what I just stated.  We shall see.
     While they may not all start at quarterback, they may all start.  It was recently reported that Braxton Miller will be a wide receiver because that is probably where he would play as a professional.  OK that makes sense and really is not a surprise to anyone that has thought about this.
      This brings me to my final point.  Could Barrett, Jones, and Braxton all be playing at the same time?  Make Barrett the quarterback, Jones as wishbone running back along with Ezekiel Elliott, and Braxton at wide receiver.  By the way, Ezekiel Elliott is a preseason Heisman candidate himself. Three of the four are awesome runners.  Three of the four are very good passers.  Who gets the ball and what do they do with it?  How could teams hope to defend such a versatile offensive backfield and wide receiver?  Think of the reverses and double reverses with Miller, Elliott, and Jones.  Think of the run-pass options.  It is almost mind boggling.  It is like the modern manifestation of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen.
     Now platooning quarterbacks is something fans think is cool.  Coaches do not usually do it.  They do not think it is a good idea.  The quarterback position is so important that coaches want to build their offenses around the styles of one quarterback, not two, and most definitely not three.  But, coaches do not usually have this excellent talent problem facing Urban Meyer.  Barrett is a quarterback.  Jones and Miller are quarterbacks, running backs, and ends simultaneously.  Why not use their skills and drive opponents insane trying to defend against all the possibilities the Four Horsemen bring to the gridiron.  Urban Meyer is a great offensive coach.  I have to assume he has been hard at work to be able to leverage this once in lifetime confluence of talent.
     Ohio State is a preseason favorite to repeat as National Champions.  They look great on paper.  They are coming off a spectacular season.  They might be one of the best teams ever.  They might be the team of the century just like everyone was touting the Buckeye team of 1969.
     Hey a fella can dream can't he?

August 2014: The First Day of School and the Opening of Football Season

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 2^nd.

•  Thursday Morning
• Thursday
•  Friday
•  Saturday and Sunday
•  Tuesday

 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.

August 2013: The Curious Case of Debbie and Mark

Mrs. Marks - Math

There are a few communities on Facebook that I have recently joined and enjoy.  These are nostalgic pages where people share memories about what was once referred to as "the Wonder Bread years" through the formative years.  The memories of these years resonate more as we age.  We remember them because they are the years that made us who we are today. 

Certainly, our families were essential in molding us.  Most of us see our families continuously since those days and because of this we do not view them as much through nostalgic glasses.  Beyond family, we remember the people and places that we have not seen for a long time quite nostalgically.  Thinking about people and places we have not seen, and possibly not thought about, for years, churn up warm memories of times we all view as quite special.

The pages I liked are:

• I LIVED IN DETROIT IN THE 60's-70's-80's
  I lived in Detroit proper in the 1960s and then in the suburbs the next two decades.
• The Ol' Neighborhood 48227/48228
  While I lived in Detroit, our Zip Code was 48227.
• IF YOU LIVE OR GREW UP NEAR  GRAND RIVER AND GREENFIELD
  When people ask in what part of Detroit I grew up, I always answer Grand River and Greenfield.

It is not hard to see why I liked these pages.  People have posted photos of Detroit TV celebrities from Soupy Sales, Johnny Ginger, Captain Jolly, Milky the Clown, and more.  Others remind us of restaurants, parks, and other places that, given the state of the City of Detroit, are long gone or in ruin.  They were part of a time we all remember as, well, simpler.  We were wide open to learning, making friends, coming of age, and all without the worries that burden us as adults.  All the memories are good.  If I had to choose, the best parts of these Facebook pages are those about our schools, school friends, and teachers… but just by a little.

On these pages, I have met childhood friends that I have not seen or heard from in way too many years.  That is the nature of growing up in Detroit well before the era of email, cell phones, and social media.  The city was changing.  Everyone eventually moved out in what has been called White Flight.  So, we moved from the city to the suburbs and lost touch.  At least, this was my case.  It has been a wonderful experience catching up with the likes of Jim Zimmerman who moved away somewhere around the fourth or fifth grade and Patty Haley Abbott who I have not seen since ninth grade.

I have written often about Detroit both the Detroit of my youth and what has become of the city of late.  Other towns and cities have changed but not so dramatically as Detroit.  Perhaps because everything has changed so, we are all a bit more nostalgic about the Detroit, the 48227, and the Burns Elementary of our youth.

   On the Grand River and Greenfield page, a Debbie Eoll Igarashi posted photos of teachers from Burns elementary school.  Wow... She posted photos of our Principal Mrs. Larson who was famous for her lavender tinted perfectly coiffed gray hair.  She posted photos of three memorable teachers, all of which I had, Miss Johnston - 6th Grade, Mrs. Marks - Math, and Mr. Harris - 7th Grade.  These were wonderful and refreshing blasts from the past.

Ms. Larsen - Principal

   I have fond recollections of all these teachers.  Mrs. Marks stands out because she taught us something called “new math.”  Basically, we spent an inordinate amount of time in sixth grade doing base 5 arithmetic.  It was hard and tedious in terms of calculations at the time.  I was not getting it and because it was “new math,” it was beyond the arithmetic our parents took.  So, there was no help at home.  I struggled a lot with these and spent an inordinate amount of time on homework often on the verge of tears and frustration.  I refused to let it beat me.  I eventually got it and developed a passion for mathematics because of it

I commented a thank you on Debbie’s posting for these great photos.  She responded saying it was her last year at Burns and she took her camera to school.  Brilliant!  Why had I never thought of that?  I might have even had my own camera at that time.

These photos made me realize that there are almost no photos of the Burns years.  I certainly have very few and they are all family or Boy Scouts.  Almost none of us had cameras or never even thought of taking them to school.  The school simply did not have class photos or yearbooks the way my children had from kindergarten through college.  None of us, with the exception of Debbie, thought to bring a camera and capture those days.  That is what made Debbie's photos so special... they were and are very rare.

Ms. Johnston - 6th Grade

Then I thought about her comment on that being her last year at Burns?  The photos were dated June 1966.  That was my last year at Burns.  We were both in the 7th Grade.  We were both in the same class.  Odd, I could not recall her name. 

We exchanged a few more messages.  We determined that we were both in Miss Allen's kindergarten class.  We had many of the same homeroom teachers.  We remembered all the music, auditorium, math, and science teachers.  We knew many of the same people.

But, we did not seem to remember each other. 

We kept thinking of things that could spark our rusty memories.  It was odd.  We knew many of the same people.  We deduced that we were in Miss Jackson’s Choir and remember performing a concert of selections from the sound of music.

Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  No recall.  No recollection.  We both commented that it was very odd.

Debbie suggested that perhaps we hated each other.  I discounted that.  If we hated each other, we would have certainly remembered.  One tends to remember one’s close friends and adversaries. 

Of course, each of us, being on Facebook, has plenty of recent photos of what we currently look like.  Debbie posted a few more photos of her from the Burns days hoping it might jog my memory.  Nope.

Mr. Harris - 7th Grade

I commented that I take great pride in my profession as a management consultant to noticing the little details when working with a client.  I certainly should have remembered my classmates minimally from a photo even if the name was not ringing a bell.  Debbie said pretty much the same thing.  She is in sales and prides herself on remembering peoples’ names and faces.

She posted one last photo.  She was guessing that it was about the fifth grade.  She was standing outside the school.  I really did not have any photos of that era available in a digital format.

My parents had recently assembled a montage for my 60^th birthday.  It was quite special and well done.  They had it put on a DVD with my own music as a soundtrack.  They had given me an envelope with all the photos they had used.  There was only one photo from my days at Burns.  So, I took a photo of the photo and posted it.

 

I looked at Debbie’s photo again.  Darn, if it wasn’t the same background.  It was quite likely it was the same day and that we did have school photos that one day.  She looked at the photos and came to the same conclusion.

We agreed that we must have been in the same homeroom and that either the teacher or a parent had taken photos of us.  Wow… but still nothing.  No hint or spark of recognition.  It was actually kind of comical at this point.  It seemed impossible that we did not know each other.

Neither of us had any recall of that photo being taken. 

Debbie Eoll and I went to the same schools from kindergarten through seventh grade at Burns High School.  Then we spent 8^th and 9^th grades at Cadillac Junior High.  After that she went to Cooley High School and Livonia Franklin.  I went to Cass Technical High School and then Livonia Stevenson. 

The metaphysicist in me suggested to Debbie that perhaps we attended elementary schools in parallel universes.  Both schools were in Detroit, both were called Burns.  They were identical in every way from every room, brick, student and teacher with one exception.  Debbie was in one school and I was in the other.  In this theory, the universe merged after we left junior high.  Good theory but hard to justify or validate.

It was time to let the mathematician in me take over.  A few paragraphs ago I wrote that it seemed impossible that we did not know each other.  Let’s fathom the probabilities.  There were two homerooms of students our class at Burns.  That means there were between 50 and 60 students.  If I went through and remembered every person I could I would probably come up with about 20-25 people.  A few of them, maybe four or so, would be close friends.  The rest would be acquaintances and just people that I knew.  That means there were another 25 or so that I simply would not be able to remember.

Think about where you work today.  You know people you work with closest to.  You probably know them well as you interface with them on a regular basis.  Beyond that, the degree of know and memorizing thins out pretty fast.  We can have a large number of acquaintances.  There are more who we see and recognize but don’t know.  There is a limit of people that we can know and remember while we are in the environment, be it a school or workplace.

Now… fast forward 40-45 years and ask the same question:  Who do you know?  Who do you remember?  The people we only saw, recognized, but did not really know have most likely evaporated.  Some of the acquaintances are probably hard to remember.  We can only recall for certain those closest to us.  The problem is even worse if, as in my case, you have not really kept in touch with people from that era.

There is a number, Dunbar’s Number.  It is roughly 150.  The number is named for Robin Dunbar a professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford.  In an NPR Report, she related a story about Bill Gore and his company Gore-Tex.  As his company grew, Bill Gore walked into his factory one day and realized that he did not know everyone anymore.  He also knew that the factory no longer ran as smoothly.   The conjecture was when a workplace got too big and the sense of community was gone, people were less likely to work as hard and less likely to help each other.

Bill Gore estimated that 150 people or less was the right size for a factory.  None of his factories are over 150 people.  When a factory hits that number, he will build a new factory, even if it is right next to the existing one.  In a 150 person factory, everyone kind of knows everyone.  Everyone knows the leadership team.  The factory is more agile and responsive to the changing market place.

This applies to the world of the Burns School class of 1966.  No wonder we felt a great sense of community.  We had a cohort of 60 or so.  We kind of all knew each other even though within that cohort not everyone was close to or really knew everyone else.

I imagine back then Debbie and I minimally recognized each other though we were not close.  As noted above, that bit of recognition simply evaporated over the ensuing years especially since there were simply no sightings or interaction of any kind.

This kind of explains the mystery.  While this makes sense from a probability standpoint, I am still partial to the parallel universe theory.

Anyway, I am glad to know Debbie Eoll Igarashi now and I am especially glad she took, kept, and posted those great photos on Facebook.