I find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending John Calipari.
With the long week before the National Semifinals, columnists around the country have been laying into Calipari, saying if Kentucky wins the National Championship with their Rent-A-Star system, it’s going to somehow destroy college basketball.
I don’t get it.
What is Calipari doing that every coach of an elite program hasn’t been doing for 20 years? Just because he is less shameless and more successful at restocking his starting five each year doesn’t somehow make his actions different, or more dangerous, than other coaches who have been chasing one-and-done talent.
KU’s Midwest Regional championship was the cherry on top of both the basketball season and our trip to Kansas City.
Oddly enough I never felt nervous Sunday. Not before the game, not during the game. I was at peace with the season and satisfied with how far the team had advanced in the tournament. I was just hoping they would be competitive. In fact, I was on record as saying they would either win by 20 or lose by 20.
If we had to put a letter grade on our trip to Kansas City over the weekend, we would give it an A-. We had a great time seeing and catching-up with old friends. We hit a couple of my favorite eateries, although again with the kids present, I can’t go quite as nuts as I used to. And, obviously, the big, unexpected thrill was being about to watch a couple basketball games with people I used to spend a lot of time watching hoops with.
Tomorrow morning, we’re packing up the family truckster and heading west. By mid-afternoon, we will be in the land of burnt ends, fountains, and boulevards.
It’s the first time we’ve taken the girls back to Kansas City in over two years, so it’s a special trip. Well, other than the eight hours in the van. But we have lots of movies and books, snacks, and a couple surprises to try to keep the girls occupied.
Three year olds are always observing, cataloging, and analyzing the actions and speech of others. Then they throw it back at you and crack you up.
Example:
The other night the girls were playing outside after dinner. First M. came in saying that L. hit her. A few minutes later C. came in, crying, with the same complaint.
I brought L. in and told her not only could she no longer play outside, but also she had lost access to the new DVD we picked up at the library just for her that day.
A couple more notes I forgot to include in Monday’s post.
A couple people asked if I watched with any of my Purdue friends. I did not. The late start on a Sunday made it difficult to get people together. My closest Purdue buddy had another obligation that night, but we did send a few texts back-and-forth during the game. Probably better that we didn’t watch it together.
Strangely enough, that was the first time KU has played Purdue or IU since we moved to Indiana in 2003.
There was a moment, late in Sunday’s KU-Purdue game, when I admitted that it had been a terrific game and I could live with a loss. It certainly helped that KU was the better team for the last three minutes of the game, but I have a feeling I would still feel that way today had Purdue been able to hold off the Jayhawks.
Which means I guess my stepping-back this year has paid off.
M.: Each morning when I drop M. off at school, she mumbles a goodbye to me as she scans the sidewalk between the van and the front door. She’s looking for friends who may be walking in. On the mornings she does run into someone she knows, I love the way they both light up, run to each other, start talking and laughing, and then walk inside together. It’s nice to be 7 and get along with everyone.
Following up on last week’s link to the Atlantic article about on-line advertising, a few thoughts about Internet privacy in general.
As we spend more-and-more time online, more-and-more people are airing concerns about what happens to the bread crumbs of data we leave in our wake. It seems like every week or so brings a new ‘scandal’ regarding how some online services provider handles user data.
Some people believe that no personal information of any kind should be logged and archived when they visit a website.
Thursday night is going to be big. After three months off air, Community returns! It’s such a big deal even The New York Times has a story about the show’s return in today’s edition.
It remains unlikely, though, that “Community” will suddenly wade into the mainstream in search of more traditional viewers. Coming episodes revolve around a collegewide pillow fight (substituting for the regular paintball-shootout episode) and a full-scale “Law & Order” parody.
It’s mid-March, which means I should be sharing some NCAA tournament thoughts, right? This has, of course, not been a normal basketball season for me. So I honestly don’t have a whole lot to say.
I’m pleased KU got a #2 seed. That seems right. I’m pleased they get to start in Omaha, and should they be fortunate enough to win two games, have another reasonable trip to St. Louis the following weekend.
Parenthood is a long, hard slog. It’s easy to get lost in all the negative things that wear you down each day/week/month. Thus, I’m going to attempt to end each week with three things that pleased me about my daughters over the previous seven days. Perhaps the public sharing of these acts will help me cope with the constant battles we’re having with them over other things.
M.: M. is our reader.
An important subpoint to my recent admission that KU basketball meant less to me than it used to is that I’ve drifted back to my first love: baseball. Baseball was the first sport I was nuts about. For a good chunk of my childhood, nothing else came close to my love of baseball.
Danny Manning and Michael Jordan changed that, beginning in 1985, and soon baseball was much less important to me than it used to be.
No surprise. The Peyton Manning era in Indianapolis will officially end today, when the Colts announce that they’ve released him. It’s the correct move, yet still a gutsy one.
Much credit to Jim Irsay who has steadily made the moves this winter necessary to rebuild the franchise. A new GM. A new coach. And now a new quarterback. Perhaps if Peyton came back healthy next year, the team would still have another playoff run or two in them.
M. gave up something big for Lent this year: playing the Wii. She had already lost access to it for a week because of a controller-related incident, but I give her credit for selecting something like that as her sacrifice.
Of course, by this weekend she was already saying she wanted to reclaim the Wii and exchange something else for it. Since we operate a very strict Catholic household, an arrangement was made.
Baring something crazy happening this weekend, it appears my basketball coverage season is complete. We have four teams that are playing in tonight’s sectional semifinals - three in the same sectional - and even if two survive until regionals, our staff writers will have dibs on their games next week.
I didn’t work as much as I’ve worked the past two seasons, but thanks to favorable assignments over the last month of the season, my teams made a big comeback and left my Total Margin Factor for the season at +22.
Here’s the problem with your kids being fans of teen stars: the stars grow up.
Monday I’m at the grocery story, doing my thing. As I waited to check out, I took my usual glance at the register magazine stands. I chuckled at the tabloid headlines. I rolled my eyes at how often Jen and Angelina still make the covers. And then I was shocked to see, gracing the cover of Cosmopolitan, my girls' favorite Disney star: Selena Gomez.
Another really interesting piece on Grantland about the end of the Peyton Manning era in Indy.
People don't want to lose him, but they are not about to test the boundaries of the First Amendment on his behalf. People would like Peyton Manning to stay, if he feels so inclined, but in Andrew Luck they see a younger and healthier iteration of the same quarterback, and they wonder if the tradeoff is an inevitable fact of life in the NFL.
I suppose it says volumes of the Timothy Dalton era that it’s taken me nearly three months to watch his two movies. In my defense the holidays, and the Christmas movie season, were right in the middle of that stretch. And the copy of The Living Daylights our library has is scratched so badly the disk does not play after 45 minutes. But still, there was not much enthusiasm about getting through these two films.
And thus, it ends.
This isn’t going to be another post rehashing the hows and whys of the end of the Kansas-Missouri rivalry. I’m not going to advocate for the continuation of it, nor argue who is more at fault for its demise.
No, this post is about that special feeling you get each year when the schedule comes out and you circle the dates your school plays your arch rival.