Hail Dear Old Croom for Thanksgiving!

I don't typically spend a lot of time talking about serious issues but today is one.

Most of you know I grew up in the South. I went to high school and college in Georgia. I married a girl from Mississippi and the vast majority of my immediate family is from the South. As such I have seen my share of race issues at times through my life. Surprising considering I was born after the civil rights era of MLK and Malcolm X, but true all the same.

I have heard my grandfather tell me and my cousin that he didn't want us to repeat the mistakes or have the same feelings he had. He grew up in Alabama and went to college in Birmingham in the 40s.

I have heard people say it was nice to not see black people. I have seen racism in EVERY state I lived in, yes, Indiana included.

I have had friends here questioned or looked at funny despite acting and wearing the same type clothing as everyone else. I have had friends not allowed into clubs for no reason.

However as a kid, I pretty much learned the right way to treat people. Actually I never thought anything about the fact that many of my best friends, especially in middle school and high school were African American or Hispanic. I just treated them just like any of my other friends.

So today was a nice day for me for lots of reasons.

My wife Jennifer is a lifelong Mississippi State fan and her older brother went to school there. A such I have adopted the Maroon Bulldogs as my second favorite SEC team. Mississippi State was a pretty decent team in the 1990s on the strength of some cheating by Jackie Sherrill, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sherrill got in trouble with the NCAA and his recruiting left something to be desired. So when Sherrill won 5 games and only 1 in the SEC in 2002 and 2003 it was time for him to leave.

The coach selected to replace Sherrill was the lily "white" Sylvester Croom. Croom was lily white in reputation, but he is African American. He was one of the first African American's to play for Bear Bryant at Alabama. He then played 1 year in the NFL before coaching as an assistant at Alabama and in the NFL for about 30 years. Finally he took over as the head coach of one of the two major state universities in one of the nation's most historically racially heated states AND also the first African American Head Coach in Football in the Southeastern Conference.

I loved the choice from the beginning not just for the race relations aspect, but for the fact that I felt he was one of the best coaches in the country that never got a head job when people like Norv Turner in the NFL and Bob Toledo or Butch Davis in college keep getting jobs.

For his first three years it was a massive struggle for Croom. He took over a team that was attempting to compete in the toughest football conference in the country with a team that lacked talent and was on probation with the NCAA. For three years he finished with 3 wins per year but improvement was there. They beat Florida to get Ron Zook fired. They beat Croom's alma mater Alabama last year to get Mike Shula (the man who got the Alabama job when Croom wasn't hired) fired.

Finally this year, the Bulldogs had broken through. They got blown out to start the season versus LSU, but plugged away through the season with wins over ranked Alabama and Kentucky. The five losses this season were against teams that had combined records of 44-19 including 19-3 by LSU and West Virginia.

So when the Egg Bowl was played today Mississippi State was in line to finish the regular season 7-5, go to a bowl game with their best record since 2000 when they also went to their last bowl game. It was also Croom's chance to put the exclamation point on the comeback for the Bulldogs and finally get people to believe the t-shirts that were sold early in Croom's career with Maroon is all that matters.

The Bulldogs made a huge comeback to overcome a 14-0 deficit for a 17-14 and Croom was speechless with emotion at the end of the game. This is one of my favorite sports moments of all time. Sly Croom, the first African American Head Coach in the SEC, beats one of the most historically racist schools in history to finish 7-5 and get to a bowl game doing it with integrity the whole way.

I loved it. Some of you know (well and all of you do now) that Jenn and I are expecting. I hope that our child will not have to witness the racism that has been in this country. I'm not naive enough to believe that it will never be there, but in baby steps walls are being broken down every day.

Cheers Sylvester...here's hoping you had the best Thanksgiving ever. I sure enjoyed it. I'm cheering you any week you don't play Georgia. 8-)

Coincidental fun note

While catching up on my Sports Illustrated reading tonight, I was thumbing through the 11/5 edition from the Red Sox win over the Rockies in the World Series.

Nice story on the Red Sox, but the interesting fact to me was a mention for my brother's alma mater, Osceola High School in Kissimmee, Florida, as well as my mom's alma mater, Fort Walton Choctaw High School in the same issue. The Osceola reference was in a high school football section about a big game with Lakeland High School. The fun note for me was that SI wouldn't lower itself to mention the OHS nickname. They are the Kowboys...yes, with a K. Anyways, the Fort Walton Choctaw mention was for a 14-year old swimmer in the Faces in the Crowd.

Meaningless to most everyone outside my family, but fun for me. 8-)

Cya folks...I promise I'll write more soon.

Peyton Gives Back

A friend emailed me this the other day. I really am not a Peyton fan, especially living in Indianapolis with their hero worship BS...but this is funny. I believe this is from his winter/spring appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Crowe Chizek RULES!!!!!

Crowe Chizek is the greatest accounting/consulting firm in the world...and my friend Kathy, she's the greatest consultant ever!!!!

For those of you wondering if I have lost my mind, I actually am playing an Internet game. 8-) Turns out my story about how Kathy and I were born in the same hospital a month apart showed up on the desk of the Communications folks at Crowe Chizek. Their Web-crawling software or service provided them a hit on my wonderful blog when I put the company name in there. That blog should have but did not end up in the daily/weekly news at Crowe newsletter. I mean come on, what could they have possibly reported on that was better than that fine piece of work.

Now I want to do it again and see if I can get them to be regular readers or better yet, even commenters. It does make you wonder though. How many things you throw on the WWW get picked up or read by people you have no clue would be reading. Maybe I should Google myself more often. Yikes.

Darth Vader of Connect Four

I like to hang out with out technology people at work. I know, they are all Trekies and Star Wars freaks and nerds, well so am I, I suppose. Except the Trekie thing anyways.

So last week I was upstairs chatting them up and I saw some of their toys. When you sit around writing code all day, you really need an occasional distraction. I understand that. Among the toys were Rubik's Cubes, Nerf Basketball, these cool magnetic connector toys and a game of Connect Four.

Connect Four, for the uninformed is a 30-year old game with the concept of tic-tac-toe but with way more possibilities.

While I chatting, one of the other developers challenged one of his compatriots to a game and everyone sort of cringed and someone said. "oooo, you are challenging, Obi Wan?"

Of course my response was, "Obi Wan? Of What?..." Well Connect Four of course. Apparently this young man has won so much Connect four he has reached legendary status.

So I couldn't let that go. After he got done with his friend I joined in the fun. He immediately pounded me twice.

Those of you that know me, know two things about me. 1. I am competitive as heck. 2. I don't like losing much. I guess those are one in the same, but losing twice at Connect Four when I couldn't imagine going in that I would have had that much trouble sort of woke me up. In game 3 I finally paid attention, worked through possibilities in my brain and won the third game.

This did not go over well with Obi Wan, much like the Darth Vader, Obi Wan confrontation in Star Wars didn't go well. My competitor mumbled under his breathe and sulked back to his desk. Needless to say I celebrated and bolted the department before hazed into a rematch where Obi Wan could come back from the dead.

I am now Darth Vader to his Obi Wan. Stand in amazement at my Connect Four superiority!

Didn't die and other random notes about my guyhood

So I made it through the flight to and from Vegas without passing on to meet my maker. Apparently it wasn't meant to be and the fact that it is safer to fly in a plane than drive a car came through with the law of averages again.

Anyways, just a few random thoughts.

** Vegas is a complete cess-pool. Everywhere you turn you are attracted by the lowest common denominator of human life...the folks on the street side smacking cards for escort services, massive amounts of retail, flashing lights, loud noises, fireworks, fountains, and lest we not forget the gambling. About the only part of Vegas that TRUELY attracts me are the sports books in the major casinos. In a sports book, you can see about 3,000 televisions including typically a personal one at your table and you can sit there all day, betting or not and watch sports with waitresses bringing drinks if you act like you are betting. Oh well, three times to Vegas and now, the more I go, the less I like it. Does that make me less of a guy? I don't know. I just reach a point where it is tiring, all that noise and lights. I just go hide in my hotel room.

** The Cameron Crowe movie Elizabethtown is amazing. I saw a portion of it tonight for about the 30th time. For those of you who don't know it, check out the link, but it is the story of a guy (Orlando Bloom) who works for a massive shoe conglomerate in Oregon (sounds like Nike to me). Bloom has a disastrous shoe come out and the same week his dad dies and he has to go to Elizabethtown, Ky. for the funeral service. He meets a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) along the way and it is an AMAZING romantic comedy. Quite possibly for the humor and irreverence toward a lot of things, but also because of the impressive music collection. I think it is actually the numerous number of quotable lines. Check it out if you haven't already. Somehow the critics typically killed this movie, but I LOVE it...again, does this make me less of a guy?

** So last night after I concluded watching the 4 p.m. NFL games to ensure that my fantasy team was ensured a HORRENDOUS week (I won't bore you with that though), I watched in succession my favorite show NUMB3RS, and then Gray's Anatomy from Thursday and Private Practice from Wednesday night. Private Practice is the Gray's Anatomy spin off featuring Addison (Kate Walsh) from Gray's Anatomy. So I repeat the question, for the third time in the same post, does that make me less of a guy? Who knows.

Toodles for now. Hopefully this week will bring more posts and less dead space. Maybe using the phrase Toodles makes me less of a guy!

Irrational Fear #13,462

In about 11 hours I have to get on a Southwest Airlines direct flight to Las Vegas and I'm not looking forward to it. Oh don't get me wrong Vegas is swell and it should be an entertaining seminar/convention for work that I am going to, but I really don't like to fly.

I don't know when this started, but I feel vaguely akin to Tom Cruise in "A Few Good Men." Actually a lot like him.

Kaffee: I get sick when I fly because I'm afraid of crashing into a large mountain, I don't think Dramamine'll help.

I don't know why or how, but I just do not like it at all! Typically I am good somewhere about 5 minutes after takeoff, approximately when the ding and the seat belts sign go off, until about the point where they start making the perpare the cabin for crash landing...err...approach and landing messages come on. That is of course unless it is in the rain or wind and turbulence, then I white knuckle the arm rest.

Making matters worse, I am flying at noon and have to meet some work folks in the late afternoon so drinks are out pre-flight. Oh and my security blanket travel partner, Jennifer isn't their either.

Guess I better go to Legalzoom.com and make sure I have a Last Will and Testament.