I am not a fan of this time of year.  Martin Luther King Jr. has a holiday named after him and rightfully so.  It is a moment of reflection for folks that do not know or do not remember to talk about him, his legacy and strong moves he and others made to push back against inequities.

The day does signify for me, in part, the beginning of a five to six week period that truthfully is very hard for me to manage.  It has turned into a time of black folks giving their resume of what members of the black community have accomplished over time.  Is it my pride about thinking that black folks are beyond spouting off their resume every February?  Maybe!  Is it my discouragement about the current plight of the black community that in my mind is marginally better off than the 60’s? Probably! It is my confidence that makes me think, “I don’t need to impress white folks.” Yes!

As amazing as these numbers may seem, we live in an America where the number of black men in jail is too close to the number of black men in college, 50% of the black males in the country did not graduate high school, 75% of black children don’t have a father in the home.  I realize that I break “black rules” by talking black issues in the company of “white folks” but at this point, I’d just assume tell the truth.  Looking back 40 + years ago and claiming success and victory will not change these numbers. We will!    

I have a hard time thinking that Martin, Malcolm and Medgar wouldn’t sound like Monday night football and exclaim, “Com’n man!”

I understand and agree with the notion that if you don’t learn from your past then you are destined to repeat it.  But the black community is in a crisis state and is probably worse off than in the past.  Sure you can find individuals, certain pockets and segments of the black community that are doing better but as a whole, the plight of the black community is not good.  

Smokey Robinson said one time, “Instead of being proud of who we were, let’s be proud of who we are.”  Who we are is a struggle right now. With all due respect to Talib Kweli who is right when he says, “Life is a beautiful struggle”, we make our struggle harder than it should be. 

We have to recognize the past.  We have to celebrate our successes and our victories.  I’m proud of my heritage and honored to be the child of activist that pushed back against the ills of society in regards to race. I’m proud to be the grandson of a sharecropper with a 3rd grade education. I’m proud to be the son of a career bus driver and educator who made sure my brother, sister and I had opportunities to do whatever we wanted. On the whole none of it matters.

If we do not appreciate the past and get better as a group, America doesn’t get better as a whole and blacks don’t get better as a community.

To Martin, Malcolm, Medgar and the great historical folks that helped create the opportunities that I capitalize on today, THANK YOU!

To everyone here right now, we have a ton of work to do!

Stop celebrating and start working!  It’s MLK Day and I’m going to do what I do every year, honor Martin Luther King by a full day of hard work trying to make my world and the world a better place.

Thanks Dr. King!

How has salaries adjusted to a weak economy? The national average is $1.36 million, up 35% from three years.

College coaches earn every cent of what they make. There are only 120 jobs in the world. It is an elite profession. Even in the most elite of professions financial commitment increases pressure, pressure increases work and in many ways encourages operating in the gray and bending, if not, breaking rules. 

Even with the NCAA hitting USC with fairly hard sanctions and we can operate under the assumption that Ohio State will get much of the same they are still a governing body that has a vested interest in the success of the institutions they regulate.

“I’m a huge Longhorn fan BUT this team will never win with Garrett Gilbert at the quarterback position.”

While obviously every Longhorn fan does not feel that way, I still have not figured out exactly how or why some fans do.

There has been a great run of Texas quarterbacks in the last decade or so under the direction of Mack Brown.

Major Applewhite is a cult hero in Longhorn circles and engineered some huge wins against Top 10 teams in Nebraska and Texas A & M, bowl wins against Mississippi State and Washington and almost brought Texas back against Colorado in the 2001 Big 12 Championship game that would have sent Texas to the national championship game.

Say what you will about Chris Simms because of his career against Oklahoma but he won huge games on the road against Kansas State and Nebraska. He annually stomped a hole in Texas A & M and delivered a beatdown to LSU, Nick Saben and Will Muschamp in his final game at the Cotton Bowl. If not for a couple of drops by fabulous freshmen Roy Williams and BJ Johnson he would have a bowl win over a Top 10 Oregon Duck team as well.

Chance Mock, while the least of these, only had serious playing time in 2003 but put together a game winning drive (in relief of Vince Young) against a good Texas Tech team and finished with a career touchdown to interception ratio of 17 to 1.

Vince Young and Colt McCoy ? Com’n man. I don’t even have to write it. Their jersey numbers are up in DKR – Texas Memorial Stadium.

Garrett Gilbert came into play after a long line of success at the quarterback position at Texas. While he did not have the same level of offensive lineman protecting him that helped each of the other quarterbacks he was also missing two young men that would have made his life a lot easier in Dan Buckner and Brandon Collins (both kicking themselves out of the Texas program with their behavior). Furthermore while the other QB’s had the likes of Bo Scaife, David Thomas and Jermichael Finley at the tight end position (all in the NFL), the tight end that would have been Gilbert’s go to guy, Blaine Irby, has been trying to put his knee back together.

All of these things coupled with the offensive structure and play calling that was summed up in the first two plays on offense against Oklahoma in 2010 and it formed an amazing cocktail for failure.

Do I feel the same way about Garrett Gilbert that I did when he won Lake Travis High School two straight state championships with two different coaches and he won Gatorade National Player of the Year?

Probably not!

Do I think the QB position should be open for competition this spring and possibly into the fall?

For sure.

Have I written off Garrett Gilbert and decided this team cannot win with him?

Absolutely not.

I do not know if Garrett Gilbert will ever reach the success that everyone expects of him or that he expects of himself.

The one thing I do know is that I don’t know how good he is or how good he can be. I don’t know how the people that profess to know can read anything from the 2010 season. With so many things going wrong in one season, it formed a muddled composition. To be able to read anything into the future prospects of Garrett Gilbert is a stretch.

We should know more this spring and will surely know a lot more by this fall but give the kid his FAIR chance to fail. Give the kid a chance to fail in a structured and fresh offense. Give the kid a chance with fresh and new approaches to offense. Give the kid a chance with skill position players that could play at a much higher level than in 2010.

Offer a chance to fail to a kid who wants it, has earned it and quite frankly deserves it.

Just one man’s opinion

In April of 2010, NFL’s Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that Roethlisberger would serve a six game suspension without pay for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.  He would have to sit the first six games of the season.  He eventually served a four game suspension.   

Around the same time in April of 2010, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes was traded to the New York Jets in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft.  Just before the trade, the NFL announced that due to his violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy Holmes would be suspended for the first four games of the season.  He had just experienced his second run-in with the law.

Why did they decide to keep Ben Roethlisberger and trade Santonio Holmes?

Was it a salary issue? No!

Was it a race issue? No!

It was a quarterback issue.  The quarterback position is the toughest position to play in all of sports.  There are thousands of good high schools quarterbacks.  There are a couple of hundred good college quarterbacks.  There are 32 NFL teams and at any given time half of the teams would get rid of their quarterback if they could find someone better.

Even though Steelers president Art Rooney II was reported to be “furious” after the second set of accusations that included vivid details that went public, his desire to field a team with a proven and winning QB was more important that alleviating a twice accused rapist.

He understood what most who follow football know – If you have a good quarterback, you better do whatever you have to in order to keep him.  The Indianapolis Colts may never win another championship with the percentage of their resources that they are dedicating to their quarterback Peyton Manning in 2011.

Because of the value of the quarterback position there was a different set of rules in play for Ben Roethlisberger than there was for Santonio Holmes.       

What you saw over the weekend in the AFC championship game against the Jets, who ironically had a touchdown caught by Santonio Holmes, was the reason for that different set of rules.

There are not enough good quarterbacks in the world to get rid of one when you have him.  The teams have to exhaust every resource available to them to rehabilitate a stray QB while other positions on the football time might be expendable.

The quarterbacks in the NFL are under a lot of pressure, maybe more than any other position in sports.  But, at least in Big Ben’s case, you get more chances than anyone else too.

I guess it evens out!

Regardless of what you think about Masoli as a person because of his problems at the University of Oregon, Houston Nutt as a coach or the University of Mississippi as a university, Masoli acted within the confines of the rules. These rules were established NCAA and they should not have discretionary power to decide if they want to follow their own policies or not depending on how it makes them feel.

If the argument needs to be made that the University of Mississippi should not have allowed Masoli in school, that’s an argument that can be made but that’s an argument for a different venue. Masoli was never dismissed from the University of Oregon, he was dismissed from the football team. That’s a very important point.

The NCAA rules state that a graduated athlete can transfer without sitting out a year if they enroll in a graduate program not offered by the graduated university. Masoli did that.

Sometimes criminals go free on a technicality because they use some obscure ruling from years before that really has nothing to do with the current case.

Citizens get away with tax write-offs every year because of loopholes in the US tax code.

If the NCAA feels that the spirit of the policy is being compromised,they should change the policy. The wrong message to send is that the NCAA is the big power broker that decides which of their own rules they want to abide by.

I doubt that the NCAA is going to change their mind because of the appeal but they should and the matter should be addressed behind closed doors if the policy needs to change.

This is not a defense of Jeremiah Masoli or Houston Nutt but an indictment on the NCAA and their hypocrisy. They create the policy and then decide not to work within it based on how they feel about a certain player.

They don’t get to do that, at least not without getting called out for it.

Michael Jordan said, “I knew players that were 10 years younger than me, some 11. But yet they had a different attitude towards the game that they truly loved because it was just a game. It was a dream that they were fulfilling. I kind of lost that in terms of what was happening with me in the game of basketball. I was on a pedestal so long that I forgot about the steps that it took to get to that and that’s what minor league baseball did for me.”

That’s a lesson that we all can learn whether we have forgotten about the steps it takes to find success or we are trying the steps to find success for the first time. There is a price to pay for every dream you want to pursue. That price is a series of steps. It is a process. Michael Jordan lost that for a while and minor league baseball got it back for him.

I love to watch successful people. Successful people do two things…

1) They make sacrifices. People sacrifice money, time with family, relationships, extracurricular activities, etc. all because they are chasing a dream that nobody sees but them.

2) They focus on fundamentals. I don’t know much about the fundamentals of wakeboarding, hockey soccer or engineering but I know that the folks in those professions that focus on the fundamentals will be the most successful.

Michael Jordan spent time in the minors outworking everyone on the fundamentals. Tiger Woods is trying to get his fundamentals back. Garrett Gilbert will need strong fundamentals in order to have large scale success in 2010 for the Longhorns.

Michael Jordan had to find the energetic child in him once again that would go after basketball the way he did before he was the best player in the history of the game. There is a lesson to learn in there for all of us. Sometimes we have to find something to energize us and fuel us to keep making steps to be who we potentially are.

What motivates and fuels you?

Answer that and you’re on your way.

My grandfather, Hezekiah Adams had a 3rd grade education and worked as a sharecropper for most of his life in North Carolina and South Carolina.  He had family members lynched, children attacked by dogs and lived a very tough and understated life.  Yet when I was on my way to Washington, DC for graduate school and to work at the Department of Justice in the 1990’s his words as I passed through Gastonia, NC were, “You better love this country!  Only in America can the grandbaby of a nobody go to work for the president.”  Yes, I was going to work for the Attorney General Janet Reno but he took it that I was going to work for President Bill Clinton.  

The 4th of July was always a huge holiday in my home growing up and I make it big now for my children.  In my home it meant fireworks, family, food, fun.  The other thing that happened on the fourth is that my brother, sister and I always got a good talking to about what it meant to us. The independence that was signed for and then battled over is a precious thing.

Even with the understanding that the thoughts put forward that afternoon in Philadelphia weren’t meant specifically for me, I do give credence to the fact that I am a full beneficiary of the outcome of those 55 men signing the Declaration of Independence.

While the United States of America collectively enjoys the spoils and responsibility that comes with independence, individually we enjoy a freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of economic determination that most countries around the world struggle to offer its citizens.

At some point during the celebration my father and mother would tell my brother, my sister and I something to the fact, “You see all of these fireworks?  Now imagine they were bombs, fires and gunshots.  The flag was still there in the morning because it stood for something and meant something.  It means something now for you too.  If that flag can make it, you can too.  The bombs you have to fight are racism, not going to the best schools and not living around the best people and not having the advantages of many other kids.”

My father used to keep it raw and say, “I don’t care if you poor, fat and black!  No excuses for not getting it done in America.  This is the spot baby!”

At the end of the day, that was the message I needed to grow up with in the neighborhood where I grew up.  The message, as I later figured out, is actually the same for everyone.  This country was built on an ideal and though that ideal struggled to show itself for many and still might, self reliance, hard work, audacity and sometimes sheer will is enough for anyone to find success in America. 

Do some people have to work harder?  Yes.  Do you have to work a little harder if you don’t come from a family with financial power or workplace authority? Yes.  Are some people born on third base and act like they hit a triple?  Yes.   

To me, that’s the life worth living.  My parents worked as hard as they could to get my brother, sister and I to first base.  I’m going to work as hard as I can to get my kids to second base and then hopefully my kids keep it going.  Every generation gets better.

Of course the bombs that I refer to are not the bombs that Francis Scott Key wrote about, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay. But that’s what that story has always meant to me. “Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there” has always meant going through tough times but still having the resolve, the determination and the guts to see the job through to the other side where success sometimes hides herself.

The 4^th of July is a holiday about respect, about remembrance, about appreciation.  I just had a great weekend with family and friends.  If you had one as well but didn’t talk to your kids about why, then sit them down and have that conversation.  You will all be better off having told the story and they will be better off having understood the accountability and responsibility that comes with the greatest independence in the world.

There was a very good lesson at church on Sunday about this very thing.  He talked about what I have learned over time – control is an illusion.  We run ourselves into the ground trying to control every outcome and every aspect of our families, careers, finances, etc.

There has been a saying, a credo even that has run my house for the last decade – “We’re gonna’ do the absolute best we can and see if God will bless it.”  I finally came to the conclusion, after stubbing my toe a number of times, that I can only control my effort and my portion of the journey.  Trying to control outcomes will only end in disappointment.  I have learned, over time, that I still many times get the desired outcome but without many of the headaches and tough conversations between the start and the finish.

Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was one of, if not the best, high school running backs I have ever seen.  He was ranked as the # 1 high school football player in the country and had every college coach from around the nation making their way to small Palestine, TX.  His recruitment ended up being a battle between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma.  They were both great football programs and both bitter rivals of the other.

In the 2003 version of the Red River Rivalry Adrian Peterson was being hosted by Texas and after witnessing a fight in the locker room at halftime and more importantly witnessing the 65 – 13 beatdown of the Longhorns by the Sooners, the decision seemed easy.  The football teams seemed to be going in different directions and there appeared to be chemistry problems in the Texas locker room.  Making the best decision he could in an effort to win the Heisman trophy and win a national championship for his team, Oklahoma was the best decision he could make at the time.

I can’t say that Adrian Peterson made a bad decision based on the intelligence he had when the decision had to be made.  Oklahoma had beaten Texas 4 straight times.  In fact, with his knowledge of the current climate of both programs it might have been deemed stupid on his part to choose to play at Texas.

 In the three years Adrian Peterson was at Oklahoma they went one and two against Texas and while he finished as the runner up for the Heisman trophy after his freshman year, they played in two BCS games and lost one 55-19 and lost the other to Boise State.  Texas in that same three year span went two and one against Oklahoma, won two Rose Bowls over Michigan and USC, with the win over USC bringing Texas its 4^th national championship.  It is conceivable that if Adrian Peterson goes to Texas and plays with Vince Young, they could have won the national championship in 2004 as well.

We don’t get to control the outcomes.  We only get to do the best we can where we are with what we have.  The only thing we can control is intent and effort.

Don’t waste your time trying to control every outcome.  Focus your energy on the journey and the work.  Work as hard as you can and be blessed by the outcome.

Control is a disease and can be deadly to you, your relationships, your health and your ultimate success.  Control yourself and let the outcomes take care of themselves.

In 2004 in Auburn Hills, Michigan, fists were flying. So were cups, plastic bottles and even a chair in one of the ugliest NBA brawls ever — and Indiana’s Ron Artest was right in the middle of it.

Artest and Stephen Jackson charged into the stands and fought with fans in the final minute of their game against the Detroit Pistons.  The brawl forced an early end to the Pacers’ 97-82 win.

Officials stopped the game with 45.9 seconds remaining after pushing and shoving between the teams spilled into the stands once fans got involved by throwing things at the players near the scorer’s table.

It all started when Detroit’s Ben Wallace went in for a layup and was fouled hard by Artest from behind. After being fouled, Wallace wheeled around and pushed Artest in the face. The benches emptied and punches were thrown.

Just when it appeared tempers had died down, Artest was struck by a cup and beverage thrown from the stands. He jumped up and charged into the stands, throwing punches as he climbed over seats.

Fans were punching back, and Jackson and another teammate joined Artest in the melee.

The repercussions led to nine players being suspended without pay for a total of 146 games, which led to $10 million in salary being lost by the players. Five players were also charged with assault, and all five were eventually sentenced to a year on probation and community service. Five fans were also legally charged, and John Green, who threw the cup at Artest, received a lifetime ban from attending Pistons home games. The fight also led the NBA to increase security presence between players and fans, and to limit the sale of alcohol.

Ron Artest suspension was for the remainder of the season, 86 total games and his missed salary was nearly $5 million.

Ron Artest, last week, hoisted the trophy as NBA champion.  Three teams and six years later the man who was vilified and a cautionary tale of what not to do had made a number of big shots and played good defense in helping the Los Angeles Lakers win title number 16.

It is hard not to recognize the fact that he is very eclectic in nature and the tone of his post game interview gave us more indication of that.  There is no explaining the depths of Ron Artest.  He thanked his family, his doctors and even thanks his Psychiatrist who he says helped him relax and not feel so much pressure.

Then amongst all of the celebration Ron Artest gave a glimpse into his soul for just a few seconds when he reflected back to 2004 with this statement,

“When I was younger, I bailed out on my Indiana team. I was so young, so egotistical, and I bailed out on Donnie, Larry, Jermaine, Tinsley, Foster, who never bails out. He just fights for you, for his team. Stephen Jackson who already had a ring, continued to fight for us, et cetera. I feel sometimes like a coward when I see those guys, because it’s like man, I’m on the Lakers and I had a chance to win with you guys, and I feel almost like a coward. I never thought God would put me in this situation again because of that.”

He recognized, his youth, his mentality and named some of the people he hurt.  It’s not quite the “12 steps” but folks, he’s seeking redemption.  He put his voice to it after he just realized a dream that his 2004 team couldn’t realize in large part because of him.  Then he recognized that he thought his penalty would be to never win a championship.

God and forgiveness does not work that way.

Artest, once vilified much like Michael Vick, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Ben Roethlisberger, Pete Rose Jose Canseco and countless others have to learn to manage through their flaws and try to be better.  For guys that should never be hailed as heroes in the first place there is a lot to learn from watching a guy fall flat on his face and work like hell to get back up.

Forgiveness is one of the most important characteristics in life because it is the only thing that allows everyone to grow through tough times.  The person who perpetrated the wrong can grow, the person wronged can grow and the people on the outside observing can grow in life lesson and forgiveness lessons.

The most important thing we can do in life, many times, is to let go, let it be, move on and experience victory.  The past is valuable, the future bright but the now is all we can manage.

As my grandmother would say, “You can’t have rosy thoughts about the future while your mind is still full of blues about the past.”

Oscar Wilde said it best, “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future” and that couldn’t be any truer.

Go live your future now!