Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Phish Friday Show in Noblesville – Totally Different from Night One

by Kent Sterling

What was up my ass during Thursday’s Phish show is anyone’s guess. I enjoyed the music, but the pervasive drug use was troubling to me. It made me sad to see so many good people go to such lengths to distance themselves from reality. If that makes me a puritan, that’s fine. I couldn’t get past it to enjoy the experience, and that’s my issue.

As oddly bitter about the first night as I was, I enjoyed the experience that much last night. The people at the show and in the campground were amazingly generous and good-spirited. Despite living only six miles from Deer Creek – no one there called the place Verizon Wireless, which I loved – the campground felt like it was a thousand miles away, and we had gone on vacation with a bunch of strangers, who weren’t strangers for long.

There is nothing better than a great surprise, and after the first night, my expectations for Friday were pretty damn low. That I had an excellent time was a real surprise.

I wrote a post yesterday about the experience of watching the show and audience from the perspective of a parent, and clearly people didn’t much care for that. Writing things that are popular isn’t my aim, which is good because the comments were skewed wildly toward the negative, but people made some salient points in their comments – the best of which was that being around 50,000 drunks at an NFL game is far worse than sharing a night of great music with 20,000 people, many of them stoned.

The many fistfights I’ve seen at or near sporting events have been much more disturbing than anything at the Phish shows. There is a camaraderie in the campground that made it seem silly to pack anything away when we left to go to the show. That anyone would be so callous as to steal was inconceivable. There was a real sense of community there that would be wonderful within the construct of a neighborhood.

Thursday seemed more jazz, and Friday was a really good rock show.

I spent some time talking to a couple of good guys yesterday trying to figure out what I missed on Thursday. Ryan and Josh were generous enough to enlighten me. Their group was so kind to my wife and I that it was incredible. They gave us shade and good conversation, making the experience exceptional for us.

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Drugs are still idiotic to me – an escape from reality that I think represents an unfortunate choice or series of choices, but the people at the show – stoned or not – were filled with enthusiasm and a sense of adventure and trust that are anything but bad to be around.

Those who were tolerant enough of a tight-ass to welcome him taught me something about tolerance. By the way, Phish made both Ryan and Josh’s night by playing “Wilson”. Now I know why.

Cubs GM Jim Hendry (Again) Gives Fans a Great Reason Why He Should Be Fired

by Kent Sterling

Jim Hendry can’t open his mouth without showing his uselessness as a shepherd of this foundering franchise. With the highest payroll in the National League and highest average ticket price, Hendry spoke of the future of manager Lou Piniella.

“He’s done so many good things – not only for us, but in the game – that I felt like there was no way I’m going to let him go. It’s the right thing to do. Lou deserves to be treated with respect. He’s earned it.”

If Hendry owned a hardware store and he had a 67-year-old stock boy who had worked for him since 1964, that would be one thing. Loyalty is great when applied appropriately, but when it comes at the expense of the success of a franchise people pay good money to watch play, that’s mismanagement. Continue reading →

Why Is Indy Sending So Many to the NBA?

by Kent Sterling

There is a piece in today’s Indy Star by Jeff Rabjohns about how the city of Indianapolis is making it look easy for kids to make it to the NBA. Currently, there are nine former Indy area players in the NBA, and the flow appears unlikely to stop anytime soon.

With the draft of Gordon Hayward, Indianapolis and Los Angeles are tied as the major metropolitan area with the most straight drafts with a first round pick. Obviously, Indianapolis has a hell of a lot less kids playing basketball than LA, New York, Chicago, and 25 other cities.

Why are Indianapolis and the entire state of Indiana so prolific in sending kids to the league? According to statistics Rabjohn cites, there are 550,000 boys playing high school ball, and the odds of any of them becoming NBA first round picks are one in 18,333. The odds of a high school player moving on to D-1 college hoops is greater than 1-in-1,000. In 2007, Indiana sent 50 boys into D-1 basketball. With 400 teams playing high school ball, and an average of four seniors per team, Indiana sent 1-in-32.

That means that at least during that year, Indiana boys were roughly 30 times more likely to play D-1 basketball that kids in the other 49 states. Seen from a different perspective, at an average of five freshman added to D-1 rosters of the approximately 330 D-1 programs in 2008, 1-of-every-33 kids who accepted an invitation to play college basketball came from Indiana.

So why does Indiana so disproportionately outnumber the rest of the country in sending boys to college and then on to the NBA? In a phrase, greatness has begotten greatness. In order to compete in basketball in Indiana, boys need to work. In that 2007 class, all the way back to the fourth grade, teams played up to eight games a week with and against the best athletes in the state. These team were also exceptionally well-coached.

Kids worked and worked to be able to compete against the state’s best teams, and when Indiana teams play in national tournaments, it was almost inevitable that Indiana teams would wind up facing each other in the semifinals or finals.

Those rivalries had one enormous, game changing effect. They sent kids to the gym to work in isolation and then in groups with trainers. In a fourth grade tournament in 1998, you could have found Eric Gordon (he played up on older teams most of the time), Jeff Teague, Nate Blank, Robbie Hummel, Scott Martin, Stephen Thomas, Ben Botts, Jake Kelly, Ryan Sterling, John Ashworth, and many others who are going to be college seniors this year or are already in the NBA.

If they weren’t in a tournament, they were working hard in a gym. There are a dozen of places in Indianapolis with trainers who work specifically with basketball players. Kids start working on skills before they turn ten, and the coaching is generally excellent. And as all those kids get better, the others are compelled to work themselves.

The other reason is that the best athletes in other states play football. In Indiana, the sport of choice is basketball. Kids quit football to play basketball here, while basketball might be the third or fourth sport of choice for kids in other areas.

Whatever the reason, Indiana is crazy fertile when it comes to basketball players, and in five or ten years, watch the number of coaches from Indiana skyrocket. The kids who could run complex motion offenses when they were ten in 1998 will be teaching college players to do it in 2020.

In the Star piece, Rabjohns commented that between Mike Woodson in 1980 and Rodney Carney in 2006, Indianapolis didn’t produce another first rounder. Off the top of my head, and I’m no historian, I can think of five – Randy Wittman (Ben Davis), Ken Barlow (Cathedral), Greg Graham (Warren Central), Eric Montross (Lawrence North), and Alan Henderson (Brebeuf). That’s not an oversight or blunder, it’s ignorance multiplied by laziness to the power of shitty editing. Everyone makes mistakes, and Rabjohns does a good job covering AAU hoops, but Jesus. Those five guys were really good. Even though Barlow never played in the NBA – all he did was win championships in Europe. He’s like Michael Jordan over there. Writing without making a mistake isn’t easy, and calling out others only encourages people to pick me apart, but that is a big swing and miss from a guy who should know better.

Chicago Cubs GM Hendry Backs Piniella – Failure to Continue

by Kent Sterling

“I have no intention of firing Lou Piniella. Lou and I have a great relationship. Lou has done a lot of good things here. We’re just going through a tough snag. It’s the middle of June. I still feel comfortable we’re capable of getting back in it.

“We’ve never talked about his future after this year. It never has been discussed and I don’t think he or I feel like we’re going to be doing that anyway. He’s fine with me. The guy has done a lot of great things in this game for a long time.”

Jim Hendry – Wednesday, June 17, 2010

What are the Cubs – a private club? The job as manager goes to a guy regardless of the level of play on display night after night as some kind of honorarium for past efforts? Jim Hendry has been living in hope and dying in desperation for years. Even when the Cubs made the playoffs, it was clear to anyone paying attention that the team was not capable of winning a playoff series. The Cubs play caveman baseball – “me grab club, hit ball hard, run around bases.”

When Alfonso Soriano laid down a sacrifice bunt least night, my son called from Chicago, “Did you see that!” Ryan was stunned. The last time Soriano moved runners with a sac bunt, my son was preparing for the July open period basketball tournaments as he was about to become a senior in high school. He’ll graduate from Loyola in 11 months with degrees in finance and sports management, so it’s been a while. The crowd at Wrigley gave Soriano a huge ovation. Cubs fans are so starved for good fundamental and selfless baseball, they applaud successful bunts with the same enthusiasm as home runs.

Hendry is a clown who has spent more than anyone else in the National League to gather some nice parts that absolutely don’t fit together, and hired a manager after the disastrous 2006 season that is utterly incapable of stirring this mix of players into a serum that can play consistently well together.

Piniella is more than happy to sit and watch the game and hope that the hitters hit and pitchers pitch. Clearly, that is not effective with these guys. From opening day, which was a complete disaster, this group of Cubs have looked like 25 men with 25 different agendas. They are anything but a team, and the culture Piniella has enforced has done nothing to change that.

Many thought Milton Bradley was the cancer on the Cubs roster last year. That obviously wasn’t the case. Bradley did nothing to help, but the chemistry on the Cubs is no better this year than last. There was nothing special in the 2007 and 2008 postseason teams either.

Chemistry is elusive, and no manager is brilliant enough to get a room filled with millionaires to coalesce every time, but Piniella seems to be completely removed from the players. And worse, he appears not to be engaged in the game. When the team with the highest payroll is one of the worst teams in the league, someone is responsible for that lack of performance. It’s either the manager or the GM. When the GM stands firmly behind his manager, it’s likely both who should be subject to the consequences reserved for failure this profound.

Both Piniella and Hendry keep saying things like, “This is just a rough patch,” “We just need to get the bats going,” and yesterday’s ”I’d like to think these guys know the spot we’re in, that they know the GM or the manager can’t pull them out of it. They need to pull themselves out of it, too. We’re there to be supportive, but the players win games — not the GM, not Lou,” said the buck passing Hendry. There to “be supportive”? No, the fans play the highest average ticket amount in baseball to be supportive. Piniella and Hendry are there to build, mold, and strategize. They are there to lead. What kind of crazy shit to say is “We’re there to be supportive.” Jesus Christ.

Tom Severino was a great boss, and he used to say, “Fix the problem. If you can’t fix it, then you become the problem. If I can’t fix you and am unwilling to replace you, then I become the problem.” Great lesson. At the time, it got my full attention because of the context of the lesson. I assimilated and corrected the issue I was had because the clear implication was that I would be fired if I didn’t get it done. We didn’t need to have that talk again.

I don’t believe anyone is holding either of these boobs accountable for anything. Hendry obviously holds Piniella in very high esteem, and doesn’t want to damage the relationship they have built. The owner/biggest fan knows that he doesn’t know a damn thing about baseball compared to Hendry, so he is intimidated by the egomaniacal blowhard. Hopefully, that passes – soon.

It’s not that Hendry is pitiful. He has done some very good things including hiring Tim Wilken to run the scouting department and Oneri Fleita to run the minor league program. Wilken’s work is beginning to pay off, and should allow the Cubs to lose the eight-figure contracts of Aramis Ramirez, Kosuke Fukudome and Ted Lilly without compromising the productivity. That’s a positive. The complete void of leadership is the negative, and it will be addressed before the Cubs achieve the level of success $145-million deserves.

Unfortunately, it appears that no one in Wrigley Field is willing to make the tough calls necessary to get it right.

Kent Sterling – Happy Self-employed Free Agent

by Kent Sterling

Life is good. It took some time to get here, but the view from the other side of having your professional identity defined by those you don’t really know is really good. There is a confidence that can only exist when you get to steer the ship for yourself.

Being able to define success for myself has been very liberating. I generally hate a term like “liberating” because its use allows the inference that power had been ceded to others, but in this case, that’s exactly what happened. I liked looking at the money I was making and the houses that my wife and I might buy. Looking back, I was a moron. Buying a great house will be a very pleasant experience, but my philosophy in doing it was driven by a lack of control at work.

There is endless fun to be had out here in the wilderness and quiet. The best part is the occasional quiet that never existed in radio. The next thing was always right there – in fact, the next dozen were right there. I tried to work a to-do list at various points during my time with Emmis, and when I did, writing the list was an almost never-ending challenge. There were so many things to do that the maintenance of the list wound up being an omnipresent item on the list.

The freedom to be creative and welcome new ideas for how I might be able to do something interesting, profitable, and/or helpful gives me hope that my life will be about more than keeping the needle bouncing with only one source of audio in the dark studio of a nearly empty building. Don’t get me wrong, I love radio. It is the medium that I think might be best-positioned to survive the turmoil surrounding media.

Radio is capable of great agility. TV is not, and newspaper is decrepit. I still buy a paper, but I’m the youngest person I know who does. Local TV is local TV. It’s not capable of adapting. It is what it is. They continue to do idiotic things like breaking into programming to spend five minutes showing the rotation inside a storm. I’m trying to watch “Hell’s Kitchen”, and while I like Brian Wilkes, I’m in no mood for him to interrupt chef Gordon Ramsey with trivialities about rain in Mornoe County. I’m in Fishers, and not to be an isolationist, but there are much more efficient ways for people in Monroe County to get information about a storm than by watching Brian point at a green screen. For one, radio is better at making severe weather entertaining.

My dreams about work have all but stopped, which is a good thing because they are rarely happy. Generally, I’m stuck in meetings much as was the case in real life. Only when I spend a lot of time with someone from work do the dreams return. The night after Dave Wilson and I spoke for an hour, I dreamed of work. I’m glad every time it happens because it means I’m still working through some separation issues. Work at a place for 17 years and run past and through hundreds of co-workers, being told to pack a box and get out stirs some emotions.

Julie and I are having a party Saturday night, and we’ve invited any and all the current and former Emmis folks we could easily get ahold of. That means all who are on Facebook. The party will be a celebration of friendship. One thing I figured out through all this nuttiness is that friendship is important, not just a professional convenience. So we’ll have this party, and welcome anyone who will have us as friends without the professional courtesies. If you Emmis/Today’s Dentistry folks or anyone else would like to stop by and enjoy a beverage or two and some laughs Saturday email me at ke************@***oo.com, and I’ll send you the directions.

Business is good. This website is a load of fun to contribute to and maintain. We’ll keep growing and evolving. The site will become more college sports oriented in the fall, and there will be some audio interviews and use of video that will make it more vibrant. As it is, we are growing each month by 5,000 to 10,000 page views. Some days are great. Some aren’t. No matter the traffic, we keep writing. The news cycle can be good or they can be bad. We keep looking for fun and truth in sports.

There are eight or nine other things I am doing, and all have their challenges. I’m writing a book about fatherhood, and the tough part is remembering what the hell I’ve already written. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if I wrote a 300 page book that was 15 different versions of the first 20 pages? I’m a little more organized than that. Using an outline helps, but still I feel this strange sense that I’ve written a lot of it before. The first draft should be done in two months, and then move on to organizing and pruning. Writing all the memories of my dad and raising my son is oddly emotional and exhausting.

I keep writing some radio tips of the week, which never fail to make me laugh. It’s not that what is written is funny. It’s just so pretentious to opine about the state of radio like I know more than anyone else. Being inside radio, it’s hard to think about the state of the business or see the direction it needs to take. The more distance between me and working in radio, the easier it is. Radio will need to be agile and nimble to survive, and management will need to stop trying to hang on to the listeners it has, and start concentrating on producing unique programming across all platforms that will engage. Not repelling was enough 10 years ago. That’s no longer true.

The dominant delivery system for media – all media – will be the web. Without the scarcity of AM/FM/VHF/UHF frequencies and Cable and Satellite bandwidths to limit competition, the quality of the product will drive popularity, ad rates, and ensure success. The bold and unique will be rewarded and the redundant will go out of business. Maybe I do know more about radio than a lot of people.

Anyway, I’m happy. My Wife is happy. My Son is happy. My Mom is happy. And I’m improving as a friend. Whoever thought listening would wind up being something I enjoy? That’s all the success I need.

Top 10 Indiana University Traditions – #5 and #6

by Kent Sterling

Indiana University was the sanctuary to which Leonard Bernstein came to compose music in the 1980s. Hoagy Carmichael composed “Stardust” at the Gables across the street from the IU School of Law. Johnny Cougar played the bars until 1980 when he made it big nationally as John Cougar Mellencamp. REM came to Bloomington to record their 1986 album “Lifes Rich Pageant”. The IU School of Music has long been ranked the top music school in the country.

Music is a huge part of life in Bloomington, and our next two traditions deal specifically with music on the IU campus.

#6 – Speakers Pointing Out the Windows on the First Warm Day of Spring

Winter in Bloomington is like music everywhere in Indiana. It’s gray, cold, and seems like it’s never going to end. It’s a nightmare to walk to classes in February. Since November, the cloud cover is relentless. During astronomy class at IU, the professor spoke about the unending cover of cloud that hang over the surface of Venus. I thought, Venus must be a lot like Bloomington in the winter. The prof noted that the clouds are made up of sulfur dioxide, and the surface temperature often reached 800-degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, Bloomington wins.

On that day when the sun comes out again, and the temperature gets to 65-70 for the first time in months, the students put their speakers in the windows of their frats, apartments and dorms. Bloomington arises from its winter nap, and the kids go bananas. Ad hoc water slides pop up everywhere, and life is filled with joy again. For at least that day, IU students become human beings again, and life is bouncy.

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Top 10 Indiana University Traditions – #8 & #7

by Kent Sterling

IU is known for so many things, at least to those who went there. That little place near Maxwell Hall where co-eds are supposed to have their first kiss to ensure a happy life together (I should remember the name, but a small edifice that that launched so many doomed relationships shouldn’t be celebrated), Hinkle’s Hamburgers (the place everyone knows, but where no one eats), and getting hosed at TIS (buying used books at an insane mark-up with money gotten by selling plasma at Sera-Tek, now BioLife. By the way, if I blew the spelling of Sera-Tek, it’s because I was down a pint every time I left the place.)

Of course, Bloomington is known for a lot of good cultural and educational things too. Those are what they show the parents during the tour when prospective students are in high school. “Hey, ‘Evita’ will be at the auditorium next month, and Thomas Wolfe with be speaking here again this fall,” the guide shares. The tickets for “Evita are $64 each, and that’s beer money for a month. “Don’t cry for me, Kilroy’s and Nick’s!” And Tom Wolfe is speaking on Blue Brew Night. A student has to have priorities.

There are other great traditions. This week, we are taking a look at the ten best.

#8 – Never Seeing a Woman Again After They Mention Meeting Her Mom & Dad

There is no better way to lose a college guy than to say, “I can’t wait for you to meet my Mom and Dad.” There is no phrase in the English language that kills a great buzz than that. Laying in a dorm room bed with a semi-hot freshman goes from very comfortable to how the hell do I get out of here in an instant when the hottie mentions the parents. The first time, the guy is caught totally off guard, stares at her in terror, and half screams, “Huh?” Over time, the response become less overtly negative, but it still elicits the same longterm response – run silent, run deep. Total radio silence. Your roommate answers the phone for the next month. You think about switching rooms. You use the peep-hole like the demon child of Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy is cruising McNutt.

By the third time this meet Mom and Dad thing happens, you are accustomed to it, and know that being honest is the best way to avoid changing your phone number and altering every part of your daily routine, but you still lie.”Yeah, that will be great. Can’t wait. Hey, I’ve got a breakfast meeting with my psych professor. Gotta run. See you soon,” you yell over your shoulder as you bolt from her room still pulling up your pants. She says something you can barely hear as you run toward the elevator. “Okay!”, you yell back knowing that she’s one-in-35,000 students, and the odds of you seeing her again are remote because you will never set foot in her dorm again, and she’s pledging a sorority while you have just decided that the Greek system is not for you because this is the third future Greek with whom you have cuddled in three weeks, and they are all going Greek.

#7 – Taking a Test with No Preparation Just to See How Well You Would Do

There are countless stories about some guy who is so brilliant that he can roll out of bed without attending a single class or cracking a book, and still ace a test in a subject about which he knows nothing. Of course, this sounds ridiculous and likely is total bullshit, but if there is a guy that Mote knows at Michigan who is roommates with the best friend of a guy at Syracuse who never studies for anything, parties all the time, and is carrying a 3.8 in pre-med, then maybe I’m that smart too. It would be a shame if I didn’t test that possibility. After all, if I’m some kind of savant, but never find out, what a waste of intellect and time that would be.

Of course, when you are that smart, you know it, but that doesn’t occur to you before you invest the lack of effort in missing every class, and never cracking open the book. You show up for the test energized by the challenge that awaits in Ballantine 013. In 1:15 minutes, the test will be over regardless, and life can go back to normal. Because the class has 135 people in it, the prof has no idea who you are, and as you open the test, it occurs to you that a better plan might have been to pay someone who took this class last semester to do his best rather than trust yourself to have miraculously inferred statistical information. After all, how can someone, no matter how brilliant come to know specific information without ever hearing or reading it.

Your eyes scan the tests around you, but the handwriting is indecipherable in the blue books. The first question asks me to explain how “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair is instrumental in enacting legislation that created the Food and Drug Administration, and unionizing workers. Uh-oh. What the hell is “The Jungle”, and who is Upton Sinclair? Okay, restate the question in the first sentence of the essay, and pray for enlightenment that is destined not to come. Look at your neighbor’s blue book again. She has a question about the assassination of President McKinley. Shit, I know everything about the two shots fired by Polish anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, New York at the Pan American Exposition!

For the next 12 years, there are periodic nightmares about that day that I was totally unprepared. The guy who magically knew everything doesn’t exist. He is a myth like the yeti or sasquatch.

Top Ten All-Time Indiana University Traditions – 9 & 10

by Kent Sterling

As a guy who spent 11 semesters at Indiana University without a single advanced degree to show for it, my area of expertise became culture at IU. That’s not the kind of culture on display in the Union or Museums, but the stuff that kids do to make the days between Summer and Christmas break pass a little more quickly. My parents, whose hands spasmed every time they wrote a check to the IU bursar, can attest to my passion for the social aspects of life in Bloomington.

Things have changed a little bit over the years in Bloomington, but the overall mood of the students still is that of a group that embraces distraction. My group of friends were experts in the art of distraction. Some of these traditions might be a bit under the radar and certainly a few of them won’t be featured in any Indiana University approved publications. Not that they are inherently antisocial or dangerous, but even Faber College would try to keep these out of the student life guide.

10 – Splashing the DGs as They Wait for the Bus

The drainage issue at the bottom of the hill on North Jordan may have been resolved at some point in the 1990s, but very little made us laugh harder than using the giant puddle that gathered each time there was significant rain to douse the Delta Gamma sisters. There was always a wonderful and priceless look of resignation on the faces of the girls as they saw our car, sometimes filled with as many as eight boobs tired of pretending to study, barreling toward the puddle with the express purpose of violently displacing as much water as possible from the puddle on to the fancy designer duds and backpacks of the uppity sorority broads.

The best event of this type was a double dose of watery fun from two cars separated by roughly 50 yards. Pauly Balst drove the lead car while I piloted the trailer. There was one girl at the bus stop, and she saw Pauly coming. A wall of water enveloped her, and she stood and screamed at Balst. She turned just in time to see the second car only a few feet from the puddle. Her demeanor changed instantly from rage to defeat. Her head bowed, and shoulders sagged as the second wave crested at 10-feet before re-soaking her.

Gone are the puddles on Fee Lane near the Business School, but we hope that the streets and san staff have allowed the draining on Jordan to remain suspect so that students don’t have to resort to hurling water balloons at Greek girls.

9 – The Walk of Shame

You know the drill. A girl swept up in the joy and revelry of a party meets a guy and hormones drive them into a frenzied night of lust before they pass out together in the guy’s bed a couple doors down from the party. In the morning, the girl awakens and has to walk home. Her makeup is all screwy and she’s still in the fancy party duds from the night before. She knows exactly that everyone she passes is thinking “Look at the whore!” Being a trooper, she gets over it in time to do it all over again the next night.

Now that girls are allowing unfettered access in the restroom at Kilroy’s Sports Bar, maybe shame is an outmoded term. I was at a party a couple of years ago where a guy and girl were engaged in some entertaining physical intimacy in a room with the light on and curtains open. After the whole ordeal ended when the sister of the male participant put a loud and abrupt stop to the fun, I assumed the girl would need a little empathy, so I asked Julie to talk to her. She and Julie sat down, and Julie asked the girl if she was okay. The girl looked at Julie like she was nuts and asked, “About what?” Maybe shame isn’t the word today. Maybe it’s ambivalence.

Big Ten Adding Schools

by Kent Sterling

There have been a multitude of recent reports, or really just one from a guy in Kansas City – a host from 810 WHB in Kansas City. The reports are premature.

There are nine schools being considered for invitation to the Big Ten Conference, according to a source close to the discussion. The Big Ten is evaluating the financial advantages to inviting Rutgers, Syracuse, Notre Dame, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, West Virginia, Connecticut, and Pittsburgh.

Any decision and vote is a long way off, according to the source, and there is no vote expected at the meeting of Big Ten presidents scheduled for early June.

Notre Dame’s membership is the big ticket for the conference, but that will require a virtual pillaging of the Big East. The Big Ten is weighing the possibility of just such a pillaging.

Missouri is still on the list with Nebraska, but the Big Ten has more to give to those schools than they have for the Big Ten. Missouri’s fan base is not as large as most schools already in the conference, and both Missouri and Nebraska bring very little as far as a significant population to potential TV audience for the profitable Big Ten Network.

The process to determine the final five invitees, should the Big Ten decide to add five, will be determined by Notre Dame. They want a say in the construct of the new behemoth of a mega-conference. The Fighting Irish will be the first to say yea or nay – although both sides will never acknowledge making or receiving an offer, unless the Irish accept the Big Ten’s non-invitation. If their answer is yes, the plan is to add either two or four other schools from the Big East. If the answer is no, the plan will change to include Missouri, Nebraska, and Rutgers.

The story is fluid, but the Big Ten is not going to act prematurely. They are looking for longterm partners, not a bandage for a flesh wound.

Kent Sterling – Recovering Program Director

by Kent Sterling

An interesting thing happens when you focus your attention on moving in a direction. The first is that you move farther away from being the person you were before you started moving. The second is that you get somewhere else more quickly than when you stood in one place. That sounds elementary as hell – so simple that it barely deserves to be written down.

Learning instead of doing is wonderful. There is freedom in admitting that I don’t know everything. The pursuit of the knowledge that has avoided me has been very rewarding. So much of our time at work is spent trying to prove that we are worthy of our position – or the next rung on the corporate ladder that we become impervious to the notion that we have so much else to learn.

The last year has been a time of ridiculous change. My boss and friend died quickly of cancer – six months from diagnosis to the grave. I was fired by the new manager for the place I had called my professional home for 17 years. This was the place I thought I would retire from. He told me when I was fired that he was probably doing me a favor, which is the kind of trite bullshit that most of us hope is true when we fire someone, but so seldom have the stones to say out loud. Oddly, he was right, but he gets no credit for that – at least not from me.

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