Having not seen Grant Hill in a few months, I go to Pistons practice with a twinge of concern. Off-seasons, I believe, are when egos take root. Players go home to friends and family. They hang out in clubs and parties. They hear the sycophants saying, "Man, you should be making more money . . ." or "How come you're not bigger than such-and-such? He doesn't have half your talent . . ."They come back with an attitude. A chip on their shoulders. During the season, there is barely time for playing, sleeping, and catching the next plane; it's the off-seasons when monsters are hatched.
Here was the worst thing that ever happened to me on Halloween. I was 7 years old. I wanted to be a mummy. Since mummy costumes were hard to find, my mother cut white rags into narrow strips. Then she wrapped me from head to toe. To keep the rags tight, she safety-pinned them together. As ideas go, it was long on love and short on practicality.
In the end, he did the smartest thing. And, more importantly, the decent thing -- for both the University of Michigan and any other school involved. Robbing one basketball program to feed your own would never fly, not in the land of "core values" that Tom Goss has rechristened the maize-and-blue."With all the coaches I interviewed, it kept coming back to one question," the U-M athletic director said Friday. " 'What will you tell the players you're leaving behind?' I never got a good answer."
When he was a kid, he was only trying to reach the couch. His older brother blocked the way, grinning and cooing, "Come on, try it. Come on." And so young Charles Woodson, with a balled-up sock under his arm, dove into every invisible air tunnel, hoping for a clear chute to the promised land of bouncy cushions."I'm gonna score on you!" he'd yell."No, you're not!" his brother would answer.
The ball came out of the lights in a quick drop -- which is what Corey Raymond was doing beneath it. His feet got tangled. Down he went. He watched the ball land in the hands of the New York Giants' Chris Calloway, who raced to the end zone with the catch, the victory, and any chance the Lions had of convincing people they are worth betting on this year.
The only problem with a perfect world is so few of us want to give up anything to have one.In a perfect world, black students would be admitted to the University of Michigan under the same standards as whites. I think everyone agrees on that.And in a perfect world, white students would not have to give up their spots.And there's the rub, the yin and yang of a lawsuit filed last week by Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher.
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.
