Ground Control to Major Todd*

The pace of technological innovation is amazing.

I write this blog on a laptop computer from various locations that have Wi-Fi using Google on the internet to find facts and photos. Sometimes I use some of my own digital photos, and I always link my posts to Facebook. Later this week I’ll be taking delivery of a Kindle Fire (Amazon’s version of the IPad).

The bolded items above did not exist when I was born, or when I graduated from high school. They’ve all been introduced in my children’s lifetimes. They’ve also all become commonplace tools for modern living. I use each of them just about every day.

The day I was born it would have cost my parents $.04 to send a birth announcement through the US Postal Service. Today postage would be $.44, or parents can send unlimited digital photos of their offspring with email for the cost of an internet connection which most households have these days already.

Pictures can be posted to social media sites as well for a mere pittance. In my day being the fifth kid in a five kid pastor’s family meant that very few baby photos of me exist. Evidently the cost of film and photo processing was prohibitive. Or perhaps the novelty of another kid had worn off, or maybe, I just wasn't that good looking as a young child as the sample above illustrates.

My parents were willing, and able, to their credit, to spend money on a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford New English Dictionary. Those two items and a library card served as the information superhighway of my youth. That was the state of the art even through my high school years. Now the combined knowledge of the world is available at my fingertips as long as they are near my laptop keyboard.

Don’t get me wrong; there were computers when I was a kid, it’s just that people didn’t own them, and they couldn’t be carried around. Organizations owned them. They were large, they were loud, and they were not nearly as fast or powerful as the laptop I’m writing this on. They were not easily accessed and were limited in their usefulness.

Jason, I love that you refer to your computer as “The Naked Lady Machine”- and, as such, I can imagine how you make use of it. Kind of amazing what they can do with a series of 1's and 0's isn't it? But I digress.

My first known exposure to computers was in first grade when my teacher asked me to stay in from recess one day to help her with a project. My class would be taking a standardized test on new computer forms with fill-in bubbles.

It was determined that it would probably take too long for a lot of my class mates to figure out the write your name and fill in the bubble with the corresponding letters portion of the test form, so I was asked to help pre-fill them. (I’ve always been a giver!) Now those forms are commonplace for students and they can fill in that portion without even thinking twice.

In the years ahead children who have only known a world with Wi-Fi and IPads to access the internet may not fully appreciate how far technology has come in a short period of time. I’m thinking that with the rapid pace of technology can space travel by commoners like me be very far in the future?

Who knows?

*The title for this blog entry was inspired a lot of years ago. Two Gopher football player friends of mine paraphrased the line, "Ground Control to Major Todd." from the David Bowie song Space Oddity. (Thanks Peno and Donnie)

They were inspired to sing that song the day I gave them a ride in the Pacer that my parents bought, as a second car, when I was a junior in high school. I love you mom and dad, always have, always will, but for God’s sake, a Pacer? Really?

Through the looking glass

‘I don’t care for jam.’

‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.

‘Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.’

‘You couldn’t have it if you did want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam to-day.’

‘It must come sometimes to “jam to-day”,’ Alice objected.

‘No it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day; to-day isn’t any other day, you know.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 1872

http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/through-the-looking-glass

I come from the world of big-time athletics. I am FROM that world, but I am not OF that world. Like the world Alice encountered in Through the Looking Glass, the world of big-time athletics is hard to understand and very confusing.

I saw a lot of really memorable things and experienced some quite unique moments.

I was in the Gopher hockey locker room on April 1^st, 1989 moments after a Gopher shot that could have been the game winner rang off the post behind the Harvard goalie in overtime of the national championship game in St. Paul only to have Harvard win the game and the title moments later. The cruelest April Fool’s joke ever pulled on a fan base starved for a national championship. (I’ve pretty much hated Harvard since that night – a hatred passed on to my daughter who went on to compete against them years later)

I worked with the Buffalo Bills equipment staff for Super Bowl XXVI. The hype and hoopla was amazing. What I took from that experience was that the Bills coach, Marv Levy, was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. Thurman Thomas (who wandered off the field after the game kicked off, just dropped his helmet and walked away from it –causing the equipment staff to have to throw a new one together and fit it to his head in the heat of the biggest game of the year) is probably the dumbest athlete I’ve ever met.

I’ve been on the sideline of every Big Ten football stadium on numerous occasions. The sea of red at Wisconsin’s Camp Randall stadium is breathtaking. The sheer size of the Big House in Ann Arbor, as you emerge from the tunnel is awesome. The noise that is generated by the Buckeye fans at the Horseshoe on the Olentangy rises to such a level that you can feel it. The narrow sidelines and pink visitor’s locker room at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium are meant to intimidate.

I’ve seen some pretty unique things in the world of big-time athletics.

I’ve also observed some distressing things too.

I saw how disposable athletes become once they are injured and will not be able to help the team compete in next week’s game. Next week’s game is the biggest concern to the exclusion of all else.

I saw coaches play mind games with student athletes. Kids who needed to perform a difficult juggling act – balancing academic, athletic, administrative, social, and dating lives – while the coach’s sole responsibility was to win games.

I saw micromanaging coaches who, when hard questions were asked, played dumb and pretended they weren’t aware of what was going on. I don’t think a Gopher basketball player ever farted during Clem Haskins’ tenure that he wasn’t aware of. Academic fraud? Clem knew nothing about that though. Really?

I witnessed firsthand the unquestioning allegiance to the head football coach. The man in the corner office is the final authority, judge, jury, and executioner, for all things that occur in his realm. The head coach can forbid people from talking to the press and outsiders.

By no means am I saying this is right. I’m just saying that it is the way it is. That’s why I say I am from that world, but I am not of that world. I saw it, I experienced it, and when the man in the corner office became a man I couldn’t respect it was time for me to leave.

The world of big-time athletics is warped and skewed by the need to win – to avoid losing. It is a world unlike any most people experience. Most of us live our lives in shades of gray rather than the black and white of winning versus losing. With so much money at stake successfully developing and maintaining a winning program will garner a coach enormous power, prestige, and latitude over the decisions that affect his organization. I’m not passing judgment. I’m just stating facts.

Until a few days ago Joe Paterno had enormous power, prestige, and latitude over how Penn State football was run. Now, he has lost all of that.

Paterno Story #1

As an equipment manager at a Nike school I used to get some of the inside information on the world of big-time athletics as they played out at schools other than the University of Minnesota. I heard from a Nike rep that when Nike began to work with Penn State to design football uniforms for the Nittany Lions that the Nike designer who showed up to meet with coach Paterno was told, in no uncertain terms, that he would need to remove his earring before meeting with coach Paterno. Evidently Paterno had no tolerance for earrings on men. He could not abide them, and would not accept them.

When I first heard the story, years ago, I kind of admired the idea that he had his own sense of right and wrong and he enforced that code of ethics in his realm. Unfortunately his sense of right and wrong did not extend to young innocent boys.

Paterno Story #2

Nike finalized designs for the Penn State football uniforms by basically leaving the plain blue and white uniforms the same but adding a small Nike swoosh to the jersey and pants. They believed that the no-frills Paterno would be pleased that they basically changed nothing on the uniform. The Nike contingent was shocked when Paterno saw the design and raged, “I knew you’d go and fancy them up!” They asked him what he was referring to and he explained that he wasn’t sure he liked the simple blue stripe they ‘added’ to the helmet. About 10 minutes later, after showing him pictures of his team from the past 20 years they managed to convince him that the stripe was not new. Penn State had worn that stripe for years.

Evidently he concentrated so fully on football strategy and schemes that he never really realized what his teams uniforms looked like even though they have not changed in years. Not seeing the forest for the trees may have cost him in the end.

Paterno Story #3

October 18^th, 1997 Beaver Stadium, State College Pennsylvania. #1 ranked Penn State has just eked out a 16-15 victory over Minnesota. Outside the Gopher locker room while moving equipment to the truck for the long journey home I was amazed to see Paterno approach. He asked me if he could address our team – a highly unusual request – unheard of actually. When allowed inside he explained to the crest-fallen Gophers that they were the better team on the field that day and that in his locker room they were counting their blessings that they had stolen one away. He encouraged the Gophers to keep on working – they had much to be proud of - better days were ahead.

I was blown away. None of us had ever experienced anything like that. It sure seemed like Paterno had a good perspective on competition. Sure, winning was his #1 priority, but letting a worthy opponent know you admired their effort was a thoughtful, though unusual gesture. He seemed to empathize with us. Unfortunately his understanding, kind words, and actions will be coming too late for the victims of the horrible scandal that he’ll now be infamous for.

I used to respect Joe Paterno. Now I just view him as Icarus, the tragic Greek mythology character who flew so close to the sun that the wax that held his wings together melted and he hurtled down into the Aegean Sea. Paterno soared to unbelievable heights in the unreal world of big-time athletics. I believe the world he thrived in, the power he accumulated, the things that made him succeed in college football, also contributed to his downfall. His consuming passion to win in that fantasy world made him turn a blind eye when a friend of his needed some moral guidance, when he needed to step back and see the bigger picture, and when he needed to empathize with the young victims of this scandal. He needed to do more. Somehow the world he lived in enabled him not to. For that he deserves more scorn now, than praise he accumulated previously.

A modern day Greek tragedy. Who knew?