Welcome to our new blog!

This is the first post of what will hopefully be many posts by Brandi and me. You may notice the presence of several older posts already on here--those are from my old SportsHistory blog. I want to make it clear to the two readers of the SportsHistory blog that the semi-regular entries you have grown to love will not be going away; they will just be supplemented by the occasional travel journal, some pictures, and whatever Brandi would like to post about, presumably her frustration with trying to go clothes shopping with Daniel. (In my defense, I missed all of the Texas game and half the A&M game, so I think that justifies a little orneriness.)

In setting up this blog, I've had to migrate everything over to WordPress from Movable Type, so expect there to be some growing pains, and I should customize things a little better once I get used to the new digs. For those of you thinking the header image is a bad Photoshop job, you're wrong, only because I didn't use Photoshop at all. I used Paint, which I wouldn't recommend. The image of the two of us is taken from a very nice image from our sunset cruise in St. Thomas--a great picture, but unfortunately not good for a banner image. So I did my best to find a similar ocean sunset. We both do actually have faces, but we'll keep you in suspense for just a little bit longer.

The War on God Bless You

It's that time of year again. The time when we all strive for peace, love, and good health, though the forces of evil sit right around the corner. It's allergy season. And though most of us see this as a time to spread good wishes, the forces of secularism are out to ruin it once again.

Since the Middle Ages, "God bless you" has been an effective means for not only warding off disease, but also for letting everyone in your vicinity know whose side you stood on, eternally speaking. But somewhere along the way, we have gone from "God bless you" to just "Bless you." Apparently, being relatively free of bubonic plague for the last few centuries has emboldened us to the point where we no longer feel the need to invoke the source of all our blessings. "Bless you" is hardly a blessing at all; it's a sentence without a subject. And it's also a way of surreptitiously shutting out those of us who oppose the secularization of sneeze acknowledgments. Consider the following:

In Minot, ND, a kindergarten teacher said "God bless you" after a five-year-old girl sneezed in class. That girl's mother petitioned the school board, and the teacher was put on a 30-day probation.

In Cleveland, OH, Wal-Mart employees have been instructed to give a two-word response to anyone spreading germs on store premises: "Bless you." The employee handbook has been amended to read, "If any employee hears another person in the store, whether co-employee or guest, issue an audible sneeze, he or she is to respond with a polite but unmistakable '[censored] bless you.'"

In Ontario, CA, a family of ear, nose, and throat specialists placed a giant sign reading "God Bless You" in their front yard. The sign was repeatedly vandalized, and several attempts were made to steal it. The neighborhood home owner's association took no action.

What's worse, many religious leaders seem to be turning a blind eye to this phenomenon, even, in some cases, leading their flocks in the wrong direction. Bill O'Reilly, well-known pundit and talk show host, recounts a story in which he realized the severity of the problem. "I'm sitting on an airplane, and I've got a minister sitting next to me. I sneeze, and he says, 'Bless you.' That's it. Not even a 'G'bless you.' Nothing. It pains me to think about this man standing in front of a congregation every Sunday and sermonizing on moral issues."

Some allergy season in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to sneeze without inviting others to display a paradoxical indifference toward their creator. Until then, just hold it in.

Let’s Talk Loyalty

News of Billy Gillespie's departure hit me like a kick to the stomach. I guess I should know better--I thought that A&M's announcement of an agreement on a new contract was meaningful, but I've seen this movie too many times before, and I should have known that when a bigger program comes calling, that takes precedence over whatever niceties have been said on behalf of the current program. Not that the niceties are insincere, it's just that money tends to have more of an effect than you would think. At least that's what I would think happens, because big time coaches and athletes have proven themselves time and time again to be mercenaries, talking over and over again about how they want to stay put, and leaving at the drop of a hat when a little more money comes calling.

It seems, however, that loyalty is a one-way street nowadays. For 80% of the Aggie basketball fans, the philosophy has been, Put a winning team on the court and I'll show up. I think that's natural, up to a point, but it always sounded a little contradictory from a student body that considers itself the greatest, classiest, most loyal sports (read: football) fans in the country. It's easy to talk loyalty when there's no cost involved, when you're talking about how loyal someone else should be to you.

All of a sudden we have an opportunity to show some real loyalty. So A&M is not a basketball program that can outattract the most successful college basketball program of all time--that's not exactly a shock. But I still have no idea how good a program we have; that will be demonstrated over the next few years. Because all we've had so far is a coach who decided to use the program as a stepping stone, and a group of fans who decided to ride the wave of success. The school is committed, I believe, to building a winner. But it's going to take more than that to have a consistently successful program.

Sweet Sixteen…anything else is gravy

I think one of the most regrettable things to witness in sports is the level of expectation we have for the teams we support and, much too often, live vicariously through. Once this year's crop of New York Yankees fails to win the World Series, as they almost certainly will, a couple million fans will whine and complain, talk about how they've been let down, and phone up sports talk stations to call for the head of Joe Torre. It's even more unfortunate to see a team that's been down on its luck for some time enjoy some success, and all of a sudden the fans, who once begged for just a winning season, now view a championship as a birthright. Think of the Dallas Mavericks pre- and post-Mark Cuban: fans used to hope not to finish last, then for a playoff spot, then for an NBA Finals appearance. This year fans will be very disappointed if the team falls short of winnning a championship.

So let me get this out there before What Have You Done For Me Lately Syndrome sets in among the Aggie basketball fans: the first Sweet 16 appearance in 27 years is an absolute joy, and if it ends here, then that's fine by me.

This Aggie team is really something to behold. Today they played Louisville in a pretty hostile environment, in a game marred by foul trouble on both sides. They gutted out a victory, erasing a late 6-point deficit and executing down the stretch to win maybe the most tense game I've ever seen. Of course that's nothing new for this team, which always seems to do whatever is needed to win. Saying that Acie Law leads this team is true but also an oversimplification. Law is great, and he was once again clutch down the stretch, but the Aggies also get often underappreciated contributions from Jones, Carter, Kavaliauskas, Kirk, and others. (p.s. Dominique Kirk is now officially my second favorite Aggie basketball player of all time, after Mr. Jerald Brown.)

This is kind of a funny year for me as an Aggie basketball fan--the most successful year by far of the last 12 years, but the only year in which I haven't been to a game. Even if I had tried to get tickets, there's a good chance I wouldn't have been able to--the tickets for every home game were sold out starting just after the Kansas game. That's a far cry from the Reed Arena I knew as a student, in which you could get your ticket a couple minutes before tip time and sit pretty much wherever you want. Those days, the basketball team ranked below the football team's band (oh wait, it still does), and it was a commonly believed (though ludicrous) legend that the basketball team would sometimes go play at the student Rec Center...and lose.

Ten years ago, things like Selection Sunday and March Madness didn't get much attention in College Station. I was a college basketball fan before I was an A&M basketball fan, and it was always a little weird for me to have to celebrate the two separately. For the four years I was at A&M, the Aggies simply were not part of the college basketball universe. They never won a Big 12 Tournament game between 1996 and 2005, and they were often ranked last in the league. At that time, anyone who followed the team would have given an arm and a leg for a tournament appearance. I kept thinking, maybe they play well in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament, then they get lucky in the second round, then a couple of the favorites fall and somehow they could end up with an automatic bid. Enter the tournament as a 14 seed and get clobbered on the first day, but at least you're there. Instead, the Ags are one of a handful of teams considered capable of winning it all, which unfortunately brings with it the possibility that anything less will be considered disappointing.

I really hate to admit this, but this sudden basketball windfall is sort of bittersweet. I've enjoyed all of the success of the team, and it's been fun seeing the campus raise its basketball IQ, but at the same time I wonder how much of a decline it would take for the university to forget once again that basketball exists. This has been an amazing year, but I think that building an elite program requires having fans that show up and give you a home court advantage even when you're not necessarily headed for a title. I hope that Aggies have become the type of basketball fans who will fill the arena even if the team's not getting tons of national coverage. If not, at least I'll have a place to sit.

Now, where are we on that Jerald Brown statue?

Super Bowl Winners and Losers

I'm not much of a fan of Super Bowl commercials. But since my pick for greatest commercial ever has descended into serial commercial territory, I took this year as an opportunity to look for something new. And while I think this year's offering was once again largely forgettable, there were a couple big losers and one big winner.

The clear loser, in my opinion, is Bud Light, for about the tenth year in a row. Whatever ad agency Bud Light uses has eschewed its creative department in favor of a recycling department. For as long as I can remember, Bud Light commercials have all been variations on one of four themes:
1) I will kick you in the crotch if you try to get my Bud Light
2) I will kick you in the crotch to get your Bud Light
3) Given the choice between drinking a Bud Light and dating a supermodel, I would take the Bud Light
4) In order to attain or retain a Bud Light, I will endure anything, including (but not limited to) getting kicked in the crotch

When you go to business school, the first thing you learn is that the best, most sustainable way to create brand equity is to establish a preference for your brand in the consumer's mind over his crotch and his friend's crotch. Bud Light has mastered this, and they've hammered the point home with flatulent horses, tumbling port-a-potties, and parachuteless parachutists.

Another notable loser is SalesGenie. Okay, so you created an ad for the largest audience on the planet, promoting a product that no more than 5% of them can actually use. Congratulations, you're officially a dot com, following in the proud tradition of all those trailblazing commercials that we saw five years ago. The only difference is that it's 2007, and you should know better.

On the other hand, maybe it does belong on Super Sunday. Based on the commercial, if you use SalesGenie, you will become more attractive to the opposite sex, you will drive a better car, and you will be envied by all of the men you hang around with. Sounds like a beer/soda commercial if I ever heard one.

The best ads were the ones for Coke, which for a long time has been conceding the Super Bowl spotlight to Pepsi. But where the Pepsi ads tend to be funny and try to be hip, Coke's latest ads are iconic, the perfect offering from a brand that knows it's #1. Coke knows that all they have to do is show you a silhouette of the bottle, and half their work is done (the bottle was actually the main character in two commercials).

Advertisers should take note of what Coke did, which is not to say that they should mimic Coke. The great thing about advertising is that it allows all kinds of brands to make all kinds of impressions, each according to what makes it special in the eyes of consumers. And yes, in some cases that means being irreverent. Pepsi, Frito Lay, and, yes, Bud Light are some brands that might do well trying to be funny. Nationwide, as near as I can tell, would be foolish to do the same, and yet they played the game too this year, giving us a Kevin Federline ad that made us chuckle (and that's it). It's said that when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail. The corrolary to that, apparently, is that if you're doing a Super Bowl ad everything looks like a potential pratfall or punch line.

The Ethics of the Exit Row Lean-Back

As any air traveler taller than five feet, one half inch knows, it's not a whole lot of fun to fly coach. What is slightly less fun is sitting coach in the row immediately behind the exit row, tantalizingly close to a precious few extra inches of leg room. And even less fun than that is sitting in the row behind the exit row and having the person in front of you flaunt his extra space by leaning his seat as far back as possible, the tray table threatening to jab you in the stomach. The exit row lean-back is quite a slap in the face, but is it unethical?

When I travel, I try to keep from leaning back because I know how it feels to have someone leaning back in to me. I guess you could say that I try to live by rules that I feel should apply universal to everyone, a concept called the categorical imperative. Though some people would like to lean back, that represents an intrusion to others, so the best thing is for everyone to keep his fingers off the recline button.

Of course, many arguments can be made for a universal lean-back allowance. The value gained by the leaner is greater than the loss suffered by the leanee, so leaning back makes a lot of sense from a utilitarian (the greatest good for the greatest number) standpoint, so long as you're not in the very back row. A consequentialist would argue that you can lean back as long as the person behind you is not exceptionally tall. But how does all of this affect the exit row?

I think a lot of the exit row lean-back mentality depends on how you believe you landed in the exit row, as well as how long you plan to stay there. If you see it as a lottery, a mechanism that more or less randomly assigns the exit row and can take it away just as easily, I can see how you would be content with all of your extra space and won't try to grab any more. ("There but for the grace of Sabre go I.") If, on the other hand, you view your placement as a result of early purchasing, high airline miles, and years of hard work, you might be less sympathetic to those who have yet to pay their dues.

If the lean-back decision is an ethical choice, it isn't much of one (which is to say that it is not very consequential), but I do think that our airline behavior serves as one obvious example of how poorly we can behave when we are around people we never expect to see again. So the next time you're flying, don't tie up too much of everyone else's time wedging a too big carry-on into the overhead, don't clog the area leading to the jetway if your group hasn't yet been called, and, if you find yourself in an exit row and see my smiling face immediately behind you, please resist the temptation to grab some superfluous space.

Terminal Sickness

Heaven and Hell. They're pretty much the most extreme things, up or down, that you can say about anything. If you want to put something down or put it on a pedestal, you simply need to compare it to hell or heaven, respectively. From our place on earth, heaven and hell are nebulous, unknown concepts, yet we use them as metaphors so often that it seems we have intimate knowledge of them. Well, I have no idea of heaven or hell, but I do know this: the closest you'll get to Purgatory on Earth is an airport terminal.

Terminal C at DFW to be exact, at least in my case. That's where I found myself this morning, when I realized that airport terminals are the loneliest busy, crowded places in the world. In Dante, purgatory is where you go when your destination is known but you have to spend a certain (predestined and handed down from God but variable and seemingly arbitrary to man) amount of time in a hell-like place before you can travel to your permanent home. Sure sounds like a layover to me.

Of course, in Dante, the sinners who are bound for heaven spend their time working off the mortal sins that have been marked on their forehead. In an airport, however, travelers seem to be indulging their characteristic weaknesses. Workahololics, junk-food addicts, and techie loners have all the PDAs, cinnamon rolls, and iPods they need to indulge their greatest vices without the discouraging social norms that characterize the rest of the world.

Airport terminals are the ultimate metaphor for the detatchment we have been able to achieve while remaining entirely connected. On a layover, you can connect with anywhere in the world and can be completely incapable of having a meaningful face-to-face interaction, and you often don't even know what the city you're in is like outside of the walls of the airport.

Whenever my Protestant friends ask me what the idea is behind purgatory, I always struggle to come up with a satisfactory response. Maybe this is as close as I will ever get: There are no BlackBerrys in heaven, so purgatory is where you go to clear out your inbox before entering the pearly gates.