Faith, hope and love... and the greatest of these is love...

I have been reading Rick Reilly's column for many years, I couldn't even tell you how many. Every week, when I got my Sports Illustrated in the mail, I would eagerly turn to the back page and read what was on Rick's mind that week. Often, I would laugh out loud, and there were times when I would be wiping tears from my face when I was finished reading. When he moved from SI to ESPN last spring, I would read his column online, but I never miss a column. He is listed off to the left as one of my sportswriting heroes, and it's true... he is one of the reasons why I am going back to school to be a sportswriter, and I hope that I come even close to the kind of writer that he is. Here is one of his columns that was posted on ESPN's website this week. It is probably in the top 5 of my favorite columns by him, and one of the most inspirational things I have ever read. Read and enjoy.... oh, and Merry Christmas!

Life of Reilly
By Rick Reilly--ESPN The Magazine

They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.
It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.
Did you hear that? The other team's fans?
They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.
It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.
"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to hit their kids," recalls Gainesville's QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. "I wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!"
And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.
But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That's because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.
This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.
So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."
Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"
And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."
Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!
"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"
It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"
Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game's last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.
After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."
And it was a good thing everybody's heads were bowed because they might've seen Hogan wiping away tears.
As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.
The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, "You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You'll never, ever know."
And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they'd never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.
Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it's nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.
Hope.

The beginning is the end is the beginning...

So, I've tried this whole blogging thing a couple of times before, and, for some reason or another, I've bailed out on it. This time, however, having been inspired by my old friend David Dollar and his ever interesting and humorous blog, I am going to try and stick with it. My hope for this space is for it to be somewhere I can be random and interesting and occasionally funny and give my friends and whomever else is interested a place to get a little bit of a glimpse into my life. So, there you have it.

It's Monday morning and I am at work. For those of you who are saying, "So what? I go to work every Monday", this is like being at work on a Saturday. Mondays are usually a day for me to rest, watch movies, run errands, clean house, etc., etc. And, adding insult to injury, it's raining, which is more reason for me to lament the fact that I had to get out of bed and drive to work, because I absolutely despise driving in the rain. I know, with the economy being what it is, and seeing friends of mine struggle to even find a job, I should feel fortunate, and don't get me wrong, I do. I actually like my job. As a self-proclaimed tomboy, working at a motorcycle shop with a bunch of guys and get to goof off and talk about sports and get paid for it is a great thing. But, I do like my days off, too.

Changing the subject, part of the reason I'm starting this blog is to try and get my writing skills back to where they used to be, because I'm planning to return to school this coming fall. It has always been a dream for me to be involved in the sports reporting world in some capacity, and so I'm going to school to study journalism in hopes of becoming a sportswriter. Everyone that has known me at all has told me that I would be great at it, and I know this as well. I would like to do either print journalism of some sort (newspaper, magazine, online, etc.) or possibly radio, since I've been told that I have a pretty decent voice for radio. I'm 28 years old, I'm not getting any younger, so if I don't do it now, I probably never will, and I'll be left wondering what if.

I'm listening to WJOX right now as I always do when I'm at work, and the big news of the day is Auburn's hire of Gene Chizik as their new head coach. For those who don't know, I am an ardent, obnoxious, bleeding-crimson Alabama fan. I started out as an Auburn fan when I was very young, because my maternal grandfather was an Auburn graduate, and I felt bad that the rest of the family was against him. Of course, I got grief from my family for this, so when I was 5, I announced that the team that won the next Iron Bowl would earn my allegience. This was 1985, and if you remember your sports history, that year was the year of the last-second Van Tiffin field goal that caused Alabama to win. So, I have been an Alabama fan ever since. Naturally, I would be very distraught if Auburn had gone out and hired a Steve Spurrier or someone of high caliber as their coach, but they hired... Gene Chizik. I'm sorry, but Gene Chizik? Really? Really?! I'm completely dumbfounded by the fact that Jay Jacobs, the Auburn athletic director, could get up at the press conference where they fired Tommy Tuberville (which I think was a complete mistake, the man has one bad season in nine, wins 6 straight over their archrival and is a highly respected coach, and they just toss him away) and announce that he is doing a nationwide search where "money is no object" and the best they can come up with is Gene Chizik, who was 5-19 at Iowa St. I mean, am I completely missing something here? Sure, he was the defensive coordinator at Auburn when they had their undefeated season in 2004, but being a good coordinator and being a good head coach are two completely different things (perfect example of this: Mike DuBose). They could have had Turner Gill, who has been impressive at Buffalo in just three seasons, but I guess Auburn is still not ready to have an African-American head coach. So, it looks like Auburn will be back to being a mediocre program for the foreseeable future. As an obnoxious Alabama fan, I have no problem with this. This means a winning streak of our own over Auburn, and it means that we can have our pick of the best recruits in the state. The downside is it will drag down our strength of schedule. Sorry, Auburn fans, I had to say it.

On a different note, I ran into one of my exes yesterday. It was weird. I hadn't seen this guy in probably seven years, and our relationship didn't end well, but it was good to see him. He hadn't changed much, it looked like he had gained some weight, but we all have. Of course, I was transformed back into the little, shy, insecure 19 year old girl that I was when we were together, which was not a good thing, and apparently, he still makes me nervous, because I found myself stumbling over my words. It's okay, though. I'm not worried about it, but it's interesting how something like that will affect you. It made me think about stuff I hadn't thought about in years, and it made me wonder what might have happened if things had been different, but then I remembered that I wasn't at fault in that situation, and that what happened happened for a reason. Anyway, so there's that.

I guess that's all I have for now. I will try to post again in a couple of days.

S

PS-- On a side note, if you were wondering about the title I used for this post, it's the title of a song by the Smashing Pumpkins. It was on the soundtrack for one of the really cheesy Batman movies in the mid-90s, and, thanks to Wikipedia, I know that it will be on the soundtrack for the new Watchmen movie that's coming out next spring. That movie looks interesting, and thanks to my ex-husband, I have developed an affinity for the "comic book movies" (i.e. Batman, X-Men, etc.), so I'll probably end up seeing it.