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.