A Fair Reply

I just read a column by a pretty good Journalist named Kevin Scarbinsky. Mr. Scarbinsky just ripped Auburn a new one for building fairly expensive and duplicate statues of it's Heisman Trophy winners plus one of the immortal John Heisman, for whom the trophy is named after. Coach Heisman was one of the great men that shoved the rolling stone that is Auburn Athletics down the hill that is Collegiate sports. Well this action by our athletic department apparently seems to make our celebratory statues hypocritical being that Alabama honor their National Championship coaches by bronzing them in front of Bryant-Denny stadium. Being the great Journalist that Mr. Scarbinsky is, he criticized Auburn in a similar fashion that he did Alabama after they started erecting statues to honor the living and the past. This quote did bother me just a bit;

"This is the same AD who dismissed the notion that Auburn would copy-cat Alabama by expanding Jordan-Hare Stadium."
                                -Kevin Scarbinsky

As much as this seems to be true, it's not completely that black and white. If Jay Jacobs copied anybody I would say it's Athletic Director Jeremy Foley about 5 hours southeast of the rolling plains of Alabama. The Gainesville Gators of the University of Florida just placed three statues of their Heisman winning athletes in front of the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium sky box seats entrance just this spring. The timing of the announcement that Auburn is building these statues is debatable being that Alabama is revealing Coach Saban's statue for A-Day. College football has always been a fight of money being thrown at whatever possible just to stay ahead of the next new thing. If you have a good idea, some other school is going use it, throw some make-up on it, and call it different. No better example of this is Alabama's version of the Tiger Prow,l or how every school has a cheaper version of Auburn's Tiger Walk. College football is politics, where you do whatever you can to stretch rules to stay ahead of the politician down the street; even if that means visiting something that has already been done, or releasing some information that seems to take the news cycle from your opponent. These athletic directors are attempting to win the support of boosters who write endless checks usually for the sole reason to be able to brag to their golf buddies and co workers how Cam Newton, Mark Ingram, or Tim Tebow himself destroyed your team and brought the glory of championships to their favorite team's history books. Oh but in politics you can't forget about your independents who win you the election. These wild cards are the 18 and 17 years olds who cherish the idea of a lot of Swag and the opportunity to see themselves idolized for as long as that university shall stand. I don't believe Jay copied what Alabama is doing, but rather he's trying to find a way to unite all his voters under one banner. So I don't agree with Mr. Scarbinsky when he used the example of Jacobs not blowing money to build a stadium Auburn could not possibly fill, just because Alabama's stadium is bigger. Even though this is a race to have the best facilities (in which the NCAA has rules holding the University responsible for not having facilities up to date that allows athletes to compete at same level as other schools) these directors have to have fiscal discipline to make sure they don't hurt the progress of their programs. Speaking of fiscal discipline, this is what Mr. Scarbinsky said next.


"In a state that comes up short in education, child care and so many other areas that really matter, don't we honor football players and coaches enough? How much is too much? Thanks to details Jacobs provided, we now have a measure. It's a bronze likeness 1 ½ times life-size that weighs about 1,900 pounds." - Kevin Scarbinsky 

Well that's the same argument that politicians have used to answer the lack of educational budgeting that they seem to have under their possession. The athletic programs in this state that spend big money completely stand on there own two legs. Meaning they make enough money to support themselves without the money that they have to take from the university because of laws like title 9. If anything is true it's this, that without Alabama and Auburn the state of Alabama would be Mississippi. The revenue generated by thousands of people fitting into an area that cannot hold them is what gets these small businesses through the year and these small businesses is what support the educational fund through their payment of taxes and the payroll taxes that are taken out of their employees checks, and through the many other ways that tax revenue is collected. These Athletic Departments influence spending from fans who want to be notice as affiliates with there favorite team superstar, to the coach's houndstooth hat, and even down to the truck they drive. Lets not forget the large work force employed by College Athletics that contribute money that spins the wheels of the pinto that is Alabama's economy.

Our problem with education has nothing to do with what Mal Moore and Jay Jacobs decided to do and what Dr. Jay Gouge and Dr. Robert Witt permits them to do. The problem lies at the base of the lack of incentives that teachers have to work. Especially when they have no allotted money to support their classrooms (unless designated by their school boards), and continue to have their retirement nickeled at as they are scheduled to lose 1 percent of the matched retirement system this May and another percent in October. Let's add the fact that teachers haven't had a raise since close to 2000, thats ten years of the same income during a inflationary period. Some would even go to talk about coaches salaries vs. teacher salaries, but if you can show me someone that can generate as much money as Nick Saban and Gene Chizik generated for their respected schools then I too would do whatever to keep them around also. A lot of what they bring to the table is why these schools have been able to withstand the mighty struggles that shake their foundation. The truth is that what our teachers lack in Alabama's High Schools is why Football players fail when they arrive to our Universities. When great teachers would prefer to be secretaries for businesses than use their god given ability to teach. Then you tend to have athletes and regular students that don't do so well at the next level, players who go on HBO for some money and attention, and I wouldn't be afraid to link this to the fact that some of them run into houses to rob people. If anything, these programs give these kids a chance to have a better life than the place from which they were raised. Athletics is a trick from universities to entice them to come get an education in order to play in the NFL. That's why more than anything, Alabama needs these Athletic Departments.

"Building a statue of Newton at this point borders on reckless. Isn't it wildly premature to start work on that tribute before the NCAA investigation into his recruitment is closed?" -Kevin Scarbinsky 

 I have worked within the confines of the athletic department for 4 years and I have traveled to every game with the team since 2006. Through all the frustration, joyous moments, and trials I've been through with this place, the one thing I will take with me is the fact that Auburn is uniquely consistent. The Cam situation has been no different, Coach Chizik, Jay, and Rich Mcglynn have done their homework and they have stuck with their guns throughout this entire thrashing. If they were to deviate from that consistency in anyway, there would be so much media innuendo about why Cam didn't have a statue. I would even get suspicious myself because the first thing a school does in any instance of trouble is distance themselves from the situation to protect it's prestige. Auburn uses family as the base to whatever they build and they try to be careful to what they add to that structure. Sometimes they judge right and sometimes they completely miss, but if you do the right thing in life, Auburn will support you in whatever endeavor or criticism you may face. I've gotten a couple of recommendations from Jay Jacobs and Coach Chizik for an athletic department job at a small college in Nashville, they have done more than I could ever ask as far as helping and meeting with me. Jay has extensive background as a Christian and Coach Chizik gives a lot of money to charities and his wife travels around the world as a missionary. So they believe in the christian principle of what you do not do for the least of these you do not do for Jesus. With all that said, Auburn made a decision about Cam a long time ago and I can't foresee anything that will change that. All efforts led by the NCAA have fallen short and all allegations against Auburn are from some people whose stories just don't fit no matter how you measure them. The NCAA will say that they are investigating this particular subject until the Sun turns into a white dwarf, because if they don't the fallout will be tremendous especially after the hit the they took for the Ohio State fiasco. 

I think Mr. Scarbinsky is an unbelievably, talented, fair, and tough journalist but just like everyone else has done in life. He missed on this one.
 

       

Cause

It's currently 12:48am on March 20th and after a long unexplained pause from one of the things I love to do best, write these over written blogs, I've decided to write once more. I'm even more sad to admit that an Zach Efron movie has awaken me from my writing coma. Charlie St. Cloud is a very good movie and I recommend it to anyone even though it has the guy from High School Musical in it. The movie is about losing things in life that means so much to us and having the faith to end that special relationship with that thing. One reoccurring theme that kept coming up like a floatation device that won't stay under water was this thing about St. Jude. St. Jude is a saint that is suppose to support human beings at the end of no hope, he basically is the guardian angel of lost causes. My favorite line of the movie is "there is no such thing as a lost cause." Alright get ready I'm about to get cheesy and write deeply about history and why we should love our country, 3.2.1.

We have met our demise many times, they come at us in every form possible, yet we continue to fight when there is no cause to fight. We press onward when earthquakes take the ground right out from under us, we stand in the wake of 30 foot tsunami waves when they storm our shores and for as much as we lose, we continue to find a cause to exist. As much as our lives are hard, there always seems to be someone out there thats living something we would call unbearable. Like the life of a Japanese fisherman who's boat got washed from it's Northern dock to central Japan by a fault line miles away. What about a Christian that stays in northern Libya, praying to God not only to be protected from those who hate what he believes but also hopes not to be consumed by the civil war unfolding in his backyard. There is also a farmer in Afghanistan who has no choice but to sell opium to evil groups of men with terrorist agendas, in order to pay for a child of his to rehab from opium abuse. 

If I could say anything to help them believe in a cause that doesn't seem to be there, to want to live for another day that doesn't seem like its worth living. I would say, at man's darkest hour there was a illuminating god that conquered all the things that this world could ever form against us, so no matter what torture awaits us, no matter the destruction that hides in our future, and no matter how close we are to our demise. Fight the good fight for there is no such thing as a lost cause. May God bless you, May he bless this country built from cause, and may God bless us to find a reason to give cause to those without any.

Saul, Paul, and Black History Month

At the end of Acts' chapter 7 an fearless profit by the name of stephen fell dead to the rocks of Jews that stoned him after he claimed to see Jesus at the side of the only true God. While the Jews stoned Stephen they laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, who from that moment went on about the business of being God's enemy. At that time the evil the Jews had committed in front of this malleable young man shaped his intentions for years until a later time when Jesus intervened. This story reminds me of a situation in which I was talking to a teacher about black history month before i spoke to her class about the monthly occasion. She said that the kids thought the month was all about black people and how they over powered the white man to become free. To finish the story of Paul/Saul being molded, Stephen cried out before the last stone freed him of his earthly bounds, "Father don't hold this sin against them." Why didn't Paul or Saul at the time take that moment of godliness radiating from Stephen and changed the world for the better instead of manufacturing evil for years after? Majority Rules, the most influence on a child's life is shaped by the people that spend the majority of the time with that child. The majority always has the loudest voice and the hate that flowed from their ruckus quieted Stephen words. That often happens with teachers, their hopeful voices often gets faded out by the noise that comes from home.

Black history month is about a common purpose and a principle that a person can have the freedom to truly do whatever they want with the God given life that they have. The majority of the people that prove this to be true was African Americans but it was a minority of whites that paid the price to see the freedom of blacks also, they were slurred at, sprayed with over powering waters, they marched while dogs bit at them, and some did give their life for my and others freedom. Its not about one but about the freedom of all for when one is not free, all are not free. Rosa fought to sit in the front for all, Dr. King said he had a dream of equality for all where his child could hold hands with a white child, African Americans fought to become even not to be exalted above any race. Black history month is not about the majority or the minority it's about process of where the minority and the majority meet. It's about obstacles taken by African American leaders and White leaders to defy the majority of what they had been taught and the majority of what others believe to hold truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. The actions of African Americans to be such examples of how a people should fight for freedom should be celebrated but not abused. We should all celebrate this month to continue efforts to push the kids of our future to the right majority, which is the story of progress of a nation of people that is different but alike at the same time. For today there are Sauls being molded when there could be Pauls molded and that divide between the two is our Slavery and our modern day segregation. I truly hope that the kids at loachapoka elementary understood my message through their present day majority.
May God bless you and May he bless this nation of immigrants, and may he give us the wisdom to create the right majorities

Where There is a Human, There is a Way

"Happy valentines day, don't be jaded there are so many people to love." That was a quote I happen to come across while rolling through my Facebook time line, from the lovely Katherine Russell. I feel as if she has always had great prospective on life every since I met her in my young days at Auburn University, as fellow students at ACF. Faith and prospective are very synonymous words, one means likely to be or become and the other means trust or confidence. Prospective is just taking a problem that is way larger than us and using our faith to make it smaller. Prospective is seeing and faith is doing, having enough belief in our abilities and our God to will ourselves through whatever storm we travel through. When we use our prospective and faith past failures, our biggest problems, and our present fears make the mountain of the uncertain future all but a pebble.

It seems as if recently the world has been burning down around me. Things just continue to get worse, as the days grow greater and as I get older. It seems as if I lost my faith in this world and the good that it can accomplish. The middle east is falling apart and no one is sure as to how it might come back together. The majority of the oil that powers the world is trapped in ports of the middle east that is worker-less because the employed is in the streets changing their governments. This has risen gas prices to new levels never seen before, effecting so many people I know who don't have a job here in Alabama from getting to job interviews, picking kids up from school, going to the grocery stores and raising those grocery prices at the same time. I also have a dear friend who has contracted cancer for the third time, and this time it's located in her brain, another friend who has a dad who fell hit his head and is now in a comma. Two friends of mine have a mother in the hospital with an unknown fever.

I don't speak of those problems to complain, but to show the faith I have in people. Age after age we as a civilization continue to rewrite the book on problem solving, we never quit, we never falter, we never stop, we never grow weary, we never lose the creativity that helps us rewrite the end of our story prolonging our journey that keeps our destruction from becoming present. The truth is that most of the time our own adversity paves the way for our success and that's having prospective. Someone once asked JFK how he became a war hero he said simply, "Somebody sunk our boat." When Chester Greenwood suffered from frost bite after a journey through the woods he went home and invented ear muffs. When Humphrey O'Sullivan got tired of his bad back aching he created the first rubber boot to support him during work. When a man shop was in poor financial position and he got his gaslight turned off due to the corrupt gas company, Thomas Edison created the light bulb. Adversity is what shapes our prospective, our faith, our battle with the unknown and our relationships with god.

Someone once said that the Brave may die young, but the cautious never live. We are the brave, we progress against all odds. Cancer may kill some of us but the rest of us WILL FIND A CURE! While oil grows short now, we will find alternatives in affordable ways. While Health care seems unsolvable, we will find a solution. While those less fortunate then us starve we will find a way to feed them. Because where there is a human there is a way! My faith in us comes from the strength god gives us, our strength to find prospective and have the faith to believe in a better tomorrow, to believe in a dawn at midnight, to know nothing but us can harm our future. For God is the same unchanging provider that gave the strength to the divide of the red sea, and the strength needed to beat cancer for the 3rd time and the strength to awake us from the grips of commas. Where there is a human god is capable of making a way.

May god bless you, May God bless this burning world in which we live, and may he continue provide the way as we follow.

The Architect of Inception

"It was just a dream all so long ago, I was so high in the sky, just don't let me fall." Those are the great words of a talented young rapper by the name of B.O.B. What are dreams and how does the lord work in them? Dreams seem to be something that we truly love and adore, something that takes us from a world not meant for us and place us in a world made for us. Whether it's what we think of as our future or what we're thinking about as we dream, they have captured our hearts like a favorite memory. Think of all the songs, speeches and movies about our dreams, Dream weaver by Aerosmith, The Wizard of OZ, It was just a dream by Nelly, the history changing I have a dream speech by Dr. King. Everyone uses dreams to connect and relate because they are like yesterdays, everyone has one and can understand where you are coming from when you use them to be descriptive of what your trying to prove or tell. My favorite dream usage comes from the movie Inception, one of the greatest movies ever made in my mind. Inception is a movie about dreams and different levels of dreaming, where you meet your enemy at each level which happens to be you and your own subconscious. The deeper you go the more dangerous it gets. At one point of this movie the lead actor finds someone else to design his dreaming because his memories keep interrupting the job at hand, this is our life. Our life is our dream, we can't continue to sleep on the days we live thinking that we can only accomplish our hope through something that's only a dream. If you want to go change the world go and do so, if you believe that you can stop what is the downfall of man reach out and break the fall, and if you can hinder destruction then why not be the world's hero. I recall 25 years ago a group of brave men and a teacher bravely lead us to the heavens from the space shuttle Challenger. They left this level of life to touch the face of God, President Ronald Regan said after their ship fell to piece mid flight. Yet their legacy is still greater than most of us that still live way after they have died. For all that this life is made of is different levels of dreaming where on the first level you fight your subconscious telling you not to even start, just dream and the second level is a stronger you telling you no and on the third level is the impossible telling you that you can't. When the truth is that your enemy is a memory reminding you of how weak you USE to be, of how you USE to fail, of how it's impossible for you to go to the next level of your life because the map is to hard to navigate. We are weak but we can gain strength, we have failed but there are second chances, and the map is much to big to navigate but we can find a new architect. When Jesus is our guide, our power, our designer, our hope, our second chance, and our architect all things are possible. Doors shut and others are open, streets close but new ones develop, bridges fall but others are built. We shall overcome, we shall ascend, level after level shall past and there will be no blocks,there will be no dreaming without doing, and there will be no waiting in limbo. Just a lot of earth shattering change! With faith abundant, Jesus can construct dreams like an architect in Inception. May God bless you, may God bless this country we call home and may HE continue to be the architect of our lives.

Promontories

I had the unique honor to sit across the table from a couple that had been together longer than the years I had lived. The greatest thing about this couple is the fact that they were 9 and 15 years old during World War 2. So I'm sitting an hour outside of Frankfort talking to these two extraordinary people who lived during the most racist time in German history only to hear them call me their grandson. See this couple is my best friend's wife grandparents and they love me just as much as Jacob and I'm proud to call them my Oma and Opa! Oma smiles every time she looks at me because the first American she ever met at the tender age of 9 was an African American, who gave her the first piece of gum she had ever chewed or tasted. The Germans that outlived the hostile reign of the German empire in those days, and the embarrassing view of the world that empire held has to be the greatest Generation in the world's history! Germany is one of the safest places to ever live because more than three quarters of the Germans follow the law to the absolute T and then dot the I. One German explained it as a people trying to make up for the wrongs they caused the world. As I watched these people it seemed as if all of them are trying to do their part to renegotiate this terrible depiction that history gave them so long ago. With that said, this subject got me to thinking, since we have all did our part in history to make this world bad why don't we do our part to make it a little better. I have these huge dreams of what my future might be and a lot of the time those dreams are so present in my thoughts that I forget to do my part in making this world better before I leave it. We as Americans with our freedom to do whatever we want, achieve whatever we want, and succeed at whatever we want, forget to do the small things before trying to conquer the huge things. If we all worked in conjunction with each other to lift the load of the future, their would be no problem with debt, no problems with the wealthy and poor, no problems with affordable health care and no problems with border disputes. We have to assemble the blocks of our country with one brick at a time or we may topple over amidst our building like the great kingdoms of Egypt, Rome, and Persia. Conquering the small before the huge reminds me of a old solider from Kentucky who held several jobs after his service to his country but finally found a great job at cooking his specially made recipe in a filling station right off a major interstate exit. When the exit and the interstate was moved he couldn't draw the money or the customers that he use to. So instead of quitting and drawing a social security check of $105 dollars a month he went to restaurants selling his chicken recipe. Next thing you know Colonel Sanders is a millionaire selling his chicken recipe to any and everyone that'll buy it and eventually he got an establishment named after him. Success is a process, even Jesus went through a 33 year process to achieve his father's glory. He went through all these predrawn details hidden in the old testament during his trials just to attend his suffering at the cross. We are all one and the small things we attend to not only certifies our own success but also encourages the process of our future together as a nation. We are all promontories! Promontories are describe as things that are surrounded on three sides but connected to something, much like Florida or a peninsula. Essentially saying that no man or woman is an Island. We are all connected, what one does the other feels, and no example is as clear as Hitler and Germany. As each star serves it's own purpose to the universe, we all serve a purpose to our communities, our states, our nations, our world, and our savior! Be mindful of the main body for no man is a island. May god bless you, may God bless these states united under him and may he continue to allow our promontories to bring success to our mainlands.

90/10

10% of our lives is what happens to us, the other 90% is how we deal with what happens to us. As human beings we choose to wrestle with the 10% of our life that can easliy be pinned, given the 3 count and defeated by what we choose to do with the other 90%. It all has to do with attitude and how positive we are about the life we live. Every day is a struggle and god gives the strength to handle those struggles, he gives us the opportunity to work for him through our positiveness. Positiveness gives us the ability to garner attention and that's where God recieves the glory, through the attention that is paid to us. That's when people ask questions like: how is she getting out of bed after he left her at the alter, how does he still smile when he has no job and no money to take care of his family, how can you continue to live when your love one's death came so quickly and suddenly, they were so young, y'all had a long life ahead of you. It's because Jesus dwells in that person, and the only way he can dwell there is through the positiveness and the faith that person clings on to. The lord cannot dwell in any unclean place and the reason we feel so disconnected from him is because there is no room for him to dwell in our heart when it's cluttered by negativity. The bridge to understanding our life and how we continue to find him amongst the trouble, the heartache, the impossible moments, and diffculties is through positive moments in a not so positive place. The souls of men and women are found during the great diffculties that cannot be explained or that can't seem to be defeated. America's greatest generation defeated the greatest war in history and a baffling depression, America's greatest presidents are known for what they did in a time of crisis not peace, and Jesus most defining moment was escorted by pain and suffering. And if our god is for us then what and who could ever stop us, that is a positive thought and you cannot believe that truly without thinking positively. With those words we gain great power, with those words we are a avalanche of faith that cannot be stopped, with that faith we cause destruction that changes the world for the greater. It all starts with positiveness and the attitude we use today to defeat tomorrow problems that God turns into a story to change one soul at a time! What can stand against us when we are positive? Nothing! I don't know what I will do with my life, but where ever I live it from I will be a mountain of positiveness. I've been to negative for this portion of my life. So God shine through me whether it's from a house on 1600 Pensylvania Avenue, whether it's from the rolling plains of Alabama, whether it's from southwest side of Clay, whether it's from a city street corner, let me be positive in your image so I maybe used for the good of the world. God bless you, God bless the good ole USA and may god make us positive every day that we live.