VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 3, Let me tell you a story about what I learned 50 years ago today, January 14, 1974, other football thoughts & a 99 on a science test: Super Bowl 8 was played on the 13th day of January ‘74 & without advice or free bet incentives from Draft Kings Kevin Hart or Ryan Fitzpatrick, while one year away from a 3 year crush on the NFL Today’s Phyllis George & still two years away from the my generations sports app, “Jimmy the Greek” on set with Phyllis, & Brent, & Irv armed with his check marks, street cred for picking Joe & the Jets in SB3 & introducing the word “intangibles” into my & other preteens lexicon, armed with only my Street & Smith’s Pro Football yearbook with Dolphins cover boy Larry Csonka & my gut instinct, I was unaware of what the “money line” was, but summoning all my 6th grade chutzpah after a post recess climb of those concrete steps that had yet to become a muse & taking my window seat in class, I played it & laid my entire weekly lunch budget, 50 cents for Sealtest chocolate milk to wash down a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, the jelly was grape because any other flavor is wrong, & Golden Flake cheese curls on the Minnesota Vikings to take down the Miami Dolphins. Late in the afternoon of 1/13/74, with the Dolphins 24-7 victory, I learned why it’s called gambling & not winning, why Las Vegas has really big buildings, why it’s exceedingly unpleasant for an 11 year old to explain to his father he has a bookie & owes him a week’s wages, and as Opie Taylor so eloquently stated adorned in torn denims & a black eye after he lit into his milk money extorting foe like “a windmill in a tornado”, on Monday, January 14th, I sadly learned why a PB&J “sure tastes a lot better with milk”.

Other thoughts: 1) Regardless of the endeavor, if you think you or you know someone who thinks themselves irreplaceable, remember Nick Saban, acknowledged as the G.O.A.T (that’s Greatest Of All Time for the acronym impaired) of college football coaches, resigned this week. In less than 72 hours, someone else was hired for his job. 2) Speaking of Alabama football, the guy with the second highest winning percentage & first coach run off in the post Bryant era, the guy that snapped to Bart Starr in Super Bowl 1 & Johnny U in Super Bowl 3, the guy that graciously answered & aided me in a Sunday School lesson & then followed me & encouraged me through social media (yes, partiality box checked) is Bill Curry, whose only fault was not winning an Iron Bowl. When you’re born in the shadow of Legion Field as I was, you know Roll Tide/War Eagle is a real thing. 3) Today, I spoke with a young man whose ball career has ended. He had people in his life like the two in item four, my Dad & Mrs. Farrow, & he’ll be glad he did.
4) I’m trying to figure out the NIL/transfer portal problem in college sports & the trickle down or maybe it’s trickle up (?), effect on AAU & travel ball. I believe it’s as much a parent problem as it is a student athlete problem. I think too many of ‘em are either misguided in believing their athlete is better than he or she is because the parents have paid the fees or they don’t want said athlete having to struggle for playing time so they follow the money & adoration to the next university or sports organization & the process starts over. I hope all the players & parents in this lane of travel will, at some point, have someone like my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Farrow, cross their path or act like my dad. She was tough, fair, & completely no nonsense. The lanes of travel she offered were her way or highway. Less than 3 months after learning my lesson while losing 50 cents, she taught me something else. I made a 99 on one of her science tests. A 99 not because I got a formula wrong or made an error in lining up facts. I was done in by English, my mother tongue. A 99 because I misspelled a word, one word. A 99 that I took home to get signed like every other test, this one with a note on top (see photo). My dad didn’t run to the principal the next day & try to transfer blame or transfer me to another teacher. It was Mrs. Farrow’s way, not highway. He just said to check my spelling better next time if I wanted a 100, that was all there was to the pep talk. I think we don’t have enough people that think enough of us to make us check our spelling …(more paywall free at mike-thornburg.com)