JCISONLINE

Well most of you know the rumored report of Cal going to UK. First I predicted that this would happen a few years back. Way before the Gillespie hire but I guess I was a little off. A couple of things are off in the report. Number one Rivals is not a student newspaper. I know I was a student at the U of M as late as 2007 and know that our paper there was “The Daily Helmsman” so that is error number one. Also the Commercial Appeal hasn’t announced anything so I would consider that enough fact that Cal hasn’t jumped ship yet. I still think it will happen and here are a few reasons that have been thrown out there:

• Money-5 yrs $32 mill is a ton of cash for anybody.
• Legit Conference- I would argue the SEC is much worse than CUSA but people that don’t watch CUSA games will yell at me. But it’s a BCS conference none the less and I guess that makes it legit.
• Most Storied Program in Basketball- At least in the top 3.

None of which I think he cares about. I really think Cal cares more about being in “The Club” more than any of these things. He wants to be looked at as one of the great coaches in college basketball. At Memphis he may not be able to get the credit he deserves. I mean 4 sweet 16′s 4 straight years is legit coaching and yet he gets no credit because of the conference he plays in which is ridiculous in the first place. It gets tiring playing the underdog card over and over and over. I think the legacy of Calipari is what this whole thing is about.

Memphis fans listen to these to keep your head up.

1. The reality is that we can offer just as much money as Kentucky can. Fred Smith loves our school and our program and we get his name out there by having a successful program. It’s a win-win for us.
2. We are a storied basketball program. We have history competing on a national level way before Cal got here. We challenged Walton and the great UCLA Bruins in their hayday. We have prestige on our side.
3. We are a basketball city. Regardless of national recruits we would have the best team in CUSA just based on the talent in Memphis alone. Joe Jackson loves Memphis more than Cal and he is the best player in the country in the class of 2010. (O yeah he’s from Memphis).
4. We play in CUSA! Our terrible conference is our greatest ally. Everyone wants a shot to win on a national scale. We can give any coach that opportunity because we will win our conference every year.

So don’t fret. Yeah he may leave us in shambles, but I mean look at the bright side. We could be looking at the NIT championship game. O wait that was Kentucky

I’ve been recovering the past two days from some crazy bad sickness I had. I have never been as sick as I was the last week. My head was pounding, had a crazy fever and couldn’t breathe through my nose. Which speaking of that, has anyone ever discovered that cereal is like the hardest thing to eat when you can’t breathe through your nose?!

But I digress. I sat on the couch for two days straight. Couldn’t watch TV because it hurt to open my eyes. So literally for two days I sat on the couch and did nothing. Couldn’t go to sleep either. Just a bad day. But it did let me know how much I hate being sick. Not the pain or hurt involved in sickness but instead the debilitation that accompanies illness. I hate not doing anything it just eats away at me.

Got some cool things coming up this week. I have a really cool idea for a competition at Orange. I know how creative the people that attend the Orange Conference are so I want to throw a challenge on you people. It’s going to be fun! Anyway, missed you guys and can’t wait to get back in the swing of things!

Kristen, came home yesterday and was just really upset. You probably already made an assumption about me making a mistake. While my life is ridden with plenty of mistakes, I thought I did pretty well this time. She’s still in school and does observation hours for her education degree, after all that she goes to work for a family with an autistic child. Then she comes home to me… Yeah (insert joke here). But at school yesterday, she had a department head drop the ball. The lady needed to reserve some space for classes and she didn’t do it on time.

Basically students in this particular department have to wait to sign up for other classes and wait to tell their job about their school schedule because the lady dropped the ball… Needless to say I was upset but Kristen was not happy, then the child she takes care of was sick and that throws all of his “normal” behaviors off kilter(if you know anything about autism then you understand the quotes). Some other things were going on and it was a rough day… Really rough. Now generally I would try and come up with some profound piece of wisdom for her but I didn’t and couldn’t. I just held her while she cried. I know only of this type of love because she gives it to me when I have a tough time. When I need encouragement she is always the first one. I got to be that for her for this one instance. And it was cool. Haven’t got many of those chances early on in our marriage but yesterday I did. It was so much fun to drop everything and give to her and yet at the same time it was a learning experience. Because as men, we can always try to fix the problem but we can’t always feel the circumstances. I got too and I am grateful for it. Spiritual Leadership is definitely deeper than ordinary leadership. And I have so much more to learn.

Guys you’ve been there. Your wife is shopping and you are…well waiting for her to stop shopping So there I was at the mall the other day waiting as my wife was trying to find a dress for a friend’s upcoming wedding. And so I sat on the couch by the waiting room for her to decide if she like what she had found on the rack. (By the way thanks for the couch Macy’s!) And instead of the usual surf the internet on my iPhone I decided to make some casual conversation with an older lady who was chillin on the couch as well.

So I did. Her name was Francis. She lived in a town in the surrounding area and she goes to a church. The same church that she has been a part of since she was 5 years old. I could pretend to guess her age but these are the quanitative statistics she threw at me when I asked about her experience there. 4 buildings, 8 or 9 preachers, and 1 pastor?! I was peaked by her particular use of vocabulary, just like someone outside the church must be when we throw out “saved” words (that one was free!) at ‘em. So I asked her Ms. Francis, “What did you mean by that, what was different about this one?”

She said, “I was going through some tough times in my life. He helped me get through them. I grew real close to him and his wife through that and I still go see them at their house.”

No powerful sermons. No incredible charisma. No awesome programming. “He helped me get through some tough times”

I’m in the production and programming world. But nothing substitutes for genuine relationship and love that comes from our Savior given to those that we have relationships with. Francis’ small testimony of how she felt just reinforced that God calls us to love Him with everything and then love others. And that no matter how flashy, heartfelt, passionate and relevant our programming is unless we are concerned with people’s lives and how we can meet their needs through the love of Christ and pointing them that way, change isn’t going to happen.

So my Tigers were scaring me yesterday and probably were scaring Matt Mckee too.
But they squeaked it out and play Maryland Saturday. Regardless of you being a Memphis fan or not, you gotta love the Madness.

So to throw a little bit of excitement at you check out this video.

March Madness

Yeah so I went to a NKOTB concert last night. Kristen is a huge fan. I am not that much. Mostly because they were before my time and I just didn’t listen to much music from when I was 2-7! But Kristen used to have the PJ’s and everything of NKOTB. So knowing we weren’t going to go I blasted my friend for going to the concert, because I thought that he was a huge fan and didn’t know that it was going to be a surprise for his wife and that she also was a huge fan.

Long story short, I ate some humble pie when he offered us tickets to go to the show with them. I was extremely grateful and did have fun. Plus we got to see a few 30 year old women cry as they were singing “I’ll be loving You”.

Plus think about how a 30-35 year old mom would celebrate when their kid hits a home run or when they just killed the dance number they’ve been practicing for months; then change it to excitement about their own celebration with the back track as “The Right Stuff” .

But the best part of the night is seeing my wife smile as she got to see one of those bands she used to love, live. It was worth more than anything else in the whole world. So big thanks to Josh Bradley (student pastor at Brookwood, and soon to be blogger) for the tickets. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my wife happy!

Now I’ve got to find an animal to kill with my bare hands to earn some man cards back.