The saddest Sad Romo of them all (Image: Jon Bois/SB Nation)
It’s halfway through the month of September. Fall is coming, but you can’t tell in Oregon because it’s still 90° here! At least we’ve got Duck football (and Beaver football for my daughter). Anyway, here’s the best of the week …
It seems like there are more and more Olympic host cities each and every year. But Sochi, the host of this year’s Winter Games, was clearly unprepared. Here is Jon’s report from Sochi. He is not there, and these photos are fake.
The Olympics Opening Ceremony has everything a bored viewer staying home on a Friday night could possibly want: pageantry, bad outfits, people walking, and announcers reading facts from Wikipedia. In other words: you’ll need a drinking game to enjoy it.
Figure skating is America’s favorite winter sport, a beautiful art form we watch because somebody coated in glitter will have her life’s work shattered because she failed to land a triple axel. But what the hell is a triple axel?
Four years after the “Miracle on Ice,” the 1984 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team never had a chance.
An impossible goal doomed them before they ever began.
Worst Case of Cabin Fever. “Snow Days from Hell” by Evelyn Shoop at Momsicle.
… when the snow started falling on Thursday, I was giddy. There it was: quiet beauty with the promise of play time. Instead, I’m locked in a low-budget horror movie. Have you seen Despicable Me 2? You know how those cute yellow minions turn into feral, fuzzy creatures of death? That’s what happened around here.
This project started with my dad on Thanksgiving. He was reminiscing about Doug Williams, who in 1988 became the first black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl. All these years later, he was still proud of Williams, whose name to some may be that of a half-remembered player from the past but to millions of others remains a powerful symbol of progress. It stayed with me, and it seemed that it was worth telling the story not just of Williams, but of everyone—of all those generations of players who struggled so that Russell Wilson could be, simply, a good young quarterback.
Maybe you are wrestling with this and don’t know where to start. Maybe being a dad isn’t natural. Maybe your dad was never in the picture. But you can make a difference right where you are. Here are some tried and true principals that every little girl needs from their dad.
My question: what if an NFL general manager just started drafting every guy named Johnson that he possibly could? Frankly, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, so we’re going to give it a try. This is a two-phase experiment:
I. WE SIGN EVERY GUY NAMED JOHNSON IN THE NFL TO THE LIONS.
II. WE RECRUIT EMERGENCY LAYMAN-JOHNSONS.
Special thanks to the largest Breaking Madden ensemble cast ever assembled, and to all y’all who applied for inclusion. While making these players, I spent so much time looking at the word “Johnson” that the silent “h” actually started looking weird and out of place. Mission accomplished.
Best Question. “Are You a Bully?” by Thomas Blevins at Elevate Dads.
As a dad, this is what hits me hardest…
According to Child Trends: “Children who have less-involved parents are more likely to bully others, as are those who have siblings or parents who model or endorse aggressive behavior. Parenting styles linked to social bullying include those lacking nurturing or that rely on psychological control of children; children with parents who manipulate relationships to assert power or gain attention are also more likely to engage in social bullying.”
Wow. Can we just agree right now that we will never be our child’s bully?
It is easy for me to picture what a person in need, or a person hurting, looks like in my mind. I will tell you this: that person is not smiling at me, pulling out my chair and asking what I’d like to drink.
… a true marriage (and true love) is never about you. It’s about the person you love—their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?”, while Love asks, “What can I give?”
My husband and I are trying to make fun stuff happen in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, our pets K-Pants and Baby Woww are fun, but they’re fun in a very volatile, Hangover sort of way. Some morning, about 16 years from now, we’re going to wake up with splitting headaches and ask ourselves, “What just happened?!? Do you remember any of it?”
In the meantime, we’re adding in a few lucid moments without the gremlins.
“The world isn’t a forest of measuring sticks. The world is a forest of burning bushes. Everything isn’t a marker to make you feel behind or ahead; everything is a flame to make you see GOD is here.”
(Wright) pointed out the several majority-Native American high schools that continue to call their teams “Redskins,” and finally made a proposal.
“They don’t want this to disappear, either,” he said. “If the Redskins, RGIII, in the offseason, spent some time to go down and work with some of those young brothers, maybe help them out with some educational opportunities and things like that — if they made a connection in that way — I think it could dismiss the entire argument. Because in that way, there would be a sense of ownership, or at least a sense of connection to the team. And I think it could be very effective, and a good story for everyone.”
I have come to the decision — since it is banned books week, after all — that my books are vile, wretched specimens of American pop culture. They prominently feature:
Over the last few months I have had the pleasure of being exposed to a group of men, who I never would have met were it not for (my) book. This group is about as diverse as they come. They are diverse politically, racially, economically and religiously. They are from different countries and continents. They are married, divorced, gay and straight. They are young with new families, and older with grown families.
The thing that these men have in common is that they are all passionate about being great Dads.
We all love our children and want what’s best for them. That similarity is far greater than any of our differences.
I have two reasons for rethinking my silence: Jack and Clio … Their (leukemia) prevents them from receiving live vaccines such as the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shot … The idea that they could be exposed to a vaccine-preventable disease while they are enduring treatment is troubling.
You might be thinking, “No worries, because those kids are protected by herd immunity.” Well, so many parents are foregoing vaccines now … (that) there are pockets where the vaccine rates are dipping below 50 percent. For herd immunity to be effective, vaccination rates need to be at least in the ballpark of 80 percent.
Get your kids vaccinated. The benefits—to them and to other children—far outweigh the risks.
Best Defense of Introverts. “In the Whirled: Socializing our kids to death” by Tiffany Gee Lewis in The Deseret News. Like me, Anna seems to be an “outgoing introvert.” As much as she can be a social butterfly, there are times when she retreats to her room and lets her imagination run wild. She needs that space.
Best Travel Article. “Expect the unexpected at Glacier Park” by Melissa Hart in The Eugene Register Guard. Hart always includes her daughter’s experiences in her travel writing. Wonderful stuff.
Writer of social justice, spirituality, and poetry. Researcher. Coach. Evidence-based believer in the power of sport as a tool to promote social change.
Fatherhood Etc. 