It is wrong and harmful and we should all be ashamed of ourselves and I guess I'm going to keep writing it until I'm the last person in this business saying it. This glorifying of high school recruits has got to stop.Last week was Signing Day for college football, which used to be a date known only to coaches. Today, it is cause for endless TV coverage, mountains of newsprint and an Internet gone wild. What's changed? Nothing and everything.The nothing part is that a high school kid picks a college.The everything is everything else.
TAMPA - Got it. Held it. Count it. This Super Bowl was always going to come down to a pass and catch. You sensed that going in. But until the final minute, that story was being inked as Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald, the amazing duo from the desert who had electrified the NFL playoffs and turned the two of them into household names. Their tandem had been quiet most of the night, but they exploded in the fourth quarter with a fade touchdown to pull within six points, and an over the middle 64-yard dagger that put the Cardinals up for the first time with less than three minutes to go.
Today America will erupt in celebration.But an outsider might ask: What are we so happy about?For most, this is the worst economy of our lives. People are losing houses. People are losing jobs. We are in two wars, and the Middle East is again simmering with violence.What are we so happy about?
There were two news-making plane crashes this past week. Miraculously, no one died in either one.But while the passengers of a US Airways jet were overjoyed to see rescuers in the frigid waters of the Hudson River, a pilot named Marcus Schrenker was much less happy.Schrenker, flying over Alabama last Sunday, radioed that his Piper PA-46 turboprop was having trouble. He said his windshield had imploded. Then, without telling air traffic controllers, he parachuted out, leaving his plane to fly on auto pilot until it finally crashed in the Florida Panhandle.
Beware the assistant coach.He can be as seductive as ice cream, or as bitter as vinegar.He can startle you with quick success, or break your heart with constant defeat.He can sprout like a giant before your eyes, or shrink in stature and skulk off in the sunset.But one thing you always can say about an assistant coach - when elevated to the position of head coach: Nobody knows nothing.So don't tell me Jim Schwartz is a great bet for success to lead the Lions, or I will tell you the same was said of Rod Marinelli, who just finished an 0-16 year.
This was Christmas night. In the basement of a church off an icy street in downtown Detroit, four dozen homeless men and women sat at tables. The smell of cooked ham wafted from the kitchen. The pastor, Henry Covington, a man the size of two middle linebackers, exhorted the people with a familiar chant."I am somebody," he yelled."I am somebody!"they repeated. "Because God loves me!""Because God loves me!"They clapped. They nodded.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
