A nice article from ESPN’s Rick Reilly:

Thank you, Peyton Manning.

This might be the beginning of something better. Might be the end of everything good. But before we slog into what happens next, where you’ll go, what you’ll do, we owe you a thank you for what you’ve done and who you’ve been.

So thank you, Peyton Manning, for never showing up in the VIP section of Cheerleaders, overserved and under-mannered.

Thank you for never ending up on Court TV, or Page Six or with parts of somebody’s nose on your knuckles.

It was trendy to make fun of your “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” and your 1950s haircut but many of us secretly admired it.

You played a violent game and yet somehow held on to that southern gentility. In the middle of the worst time of your life, you took the time to write a hand-written note of sympathy last week to Fox’s Chris Myers upon the death of his son.

Thank you for watching more film than Martin Scorsese. Thank you for always being the last one to go home at night, for knowing more about what defenses were going to do than some of the players on those defenses themselves.

You came to a nowhere franchise and made it Somewhere. Greatness poured out of your fingers because you put in the hours and the study and the pain to let it. Two Super Bowls, four NFL MVPs, 11 Pro Bowls, 11 playoff seasons and more records than a used CD store.

That Super Bowl win was classic you. Every day that whole week, you made your center, Jeff Saturday, spend an extra 15 minutes snapping you balls you’d soaked in a bucket of water. “It might rain,” you said. So when it did, and Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman looked like he was throwing greased watermelons, you looked like you were throwing rocks.

Fourteen years in the league and the worst we can say about you is that you made a lot of castor-oil faces and your helmet left funny marks and one time you laid into your “idiot kicker.” Fourteen years and you didn’t sext anything, wreck anything or deck anybody.

You were a 10,000-watt bulb in a small city, and yet you never seemed to tire of it. If you did, you rarely showed it. There’s a fan website – peytonmanning18.com/encounters.html – where everyday people tell how you were with them. It’s hard to find a rotten one.

Read the rest.

This is a nice story.

If you follow wrestling you’ll know that Ohio is a hotbed of some of the best high school wrestling (and pretty good college wrestling, too) in the country.  To be blind and to qualify for the state tournament is quite an accomplishment.  All the more so considering the quality of competition this young man faced.

Jesse Gunter never lost faith.

Blind since birth, the Coventry senior has pursued his dream of wrestling at the state tournament with a relentlessness drive and unrelenting faith.

No one would have blamed Gunter if he had given up, and not because of his physical impairment. Rather, it was a string of misfortune on the mat that might have derailed other wrestlers.

But Gunter made it. He made it to state last Saturday, winning the so-called “go-to” match that has been his Achilles’ heel. Gunter’s consolation semifinal victory at the Alliance district tournament clinched a 120-pound berth in the Division II state tournament beginning Thursday at Ohio State.

Some would call Gunter disabled. He feels blessed.

“My point is: ‘This is how God made me, and you might see me differently. I see myself as unique,’” said Gunter, who carries a 3.68 grade-point average while taking classes at the University of Akron.

Gunter is as thoughtful as he is motivated. It should come as no surprise his plan is to study psychology and theology and become a preacher.

“My faith is very important to me to me because it’s something I’ve been raised with, and it’s always in my heart,” he said. “It never goes away, and it never will.”

Read it all.

A really nice article by Rick Reilly:

A man is more than his failings.

I learned a lot about Paterno when I wrote a story about him in 1986 for Sports Illustrated. I’ve learned a lot about him since. He was a humble, funny and giving man who was unlike any other coach I ever met in college football. He rolled up his pants to save on dry cleaning bills. He lived in the same simple ranch house for the last 45 years. Same glasses, same wife, same job, for most of his adult life.

He was a man who had two national championships, five undefeated seasons, and yet for years he drove a white Ford Tempo. In 46 years as a head coach, he never had a single major NCAA violation.

Read the rest.

UPI is reporting that Joe Paterno has died tonight.

People magazine has this report.

Saw that CBSSports is reporting his death as well while ESPN is saying he’s “near death.”

I’m a Belichick fan.

I became aware of him when he was the DC for the Giants.  I was thrilled when he became the HC of the Browns.  And, while that chapter of his life ended badly (for the Browns, anyway), I was impressed by his approach to the game and to leadership culture he created.

A few years ago, I had my staff read David Halberstam’s (one of my all-time favorite authors) excellent book, The Education of a Coach.  Some thought it an odd choice – especially those fans of other teams.  However, I have a value for cross-discipline learning and Halberstam explored the nuances of both the game and the man. Halberstam wrote, “I’ve been fascinated by Bill Belichick for more than twenty years, going back to the time when he was a young coach in his early thirties working with the linebackers on the Giants. . . There was, I thought, a certain signature to a Belichick game and I was fascinated by that, and by the fact that he seemed so uncoachlike, or perhaps the prototype for a very different kind of modern coach in what is an increasingly complicated game.”

In my mind, Halberstam’s words echoed the need for a radically different approach to “church” in an increasingly complicated and rapidly changing world.

Yesterday, the Post & Courier ran an article by Jim Litke wondering if Belichick is the game’s last real anarchist.  It “refreshed” my leadership browser.  Like him or not, the man is brilliant.  For me, he remains a model (not THE model, but a model) of leadership and innovation.  Also, his ability to create a “discipling” culture is impressive.  As Halberstam notes above there is “a certain signature to a Belichick game.”

I wonder what your “signature” is?

Here’s a clip from Litke’s article:

There’s something about Bill Belichick that rubs people the wrong way.

Not Patriots fans, of course, nor most of the guys who play for him. That’s because he’s taken their teams to four Super Bowls, won three, and has them back in the AFC title game this Sunday for the sixth time in his 11 seasons. It’s how he does it that riles most everyone else.

Read the rest.

Did you watch the Broncos game this past week against the Steelers?  Amazing.

The columnist, not a Tebow PR guy, had a great take on what we saw:

We’re watching a new reality unfold, right before our eyes, and what we saw Sunday strained credibility. It was incredible. It was fantastical. It was damn near a Bible story.

Read the rest.

#10 and climbing.  Who’d have thunk it after the news of the past year.

From ESPN:

Well, because since Urban Meyer has taken over at Ohio State, he’s landed three ESPNU 150 defensive linemen, highlighted by five-star DE Noah Spence, who is the nation’s fourth-best prospect. Spence, who wasn’t even considering the Buckeyes before Meyer was hired, joins Se’Von Pittman and Tommy Schutt, who flipped from Michigan State and Penn State, respectively, in a Buckeyes class that is now ranked 10th in the country.

Read the rest and see the rankings.

With the recent signings, Sports Illustrated puts us in the Top 5.

There is a very nice article in today’s Post & Courier sports section highlighting SAMP’s own (and very active member) Georgia Compton who was named girls cross country runner of the year.  Also mentioned in the article is her closest area competitor, her little sister, Rosa Marie (also a very active member).

Here’s a snip:

Talented Wando junior runner Georgia Compton is the female runner of the year. She had the top local finish at the High School League’s Class AAAA state meet with a time of 18:58.

Read it all.

Well done, girls!

After the year we’ve had it’s nice to see Urban Meyer already restoring the luster to OSU.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Several top players, including wide receiver Ricquan Southward, have changed their verbal commitments to join the Buckeyes.

Se’Von Pittman changed his verbal commitment from Michigan State and he will now join the Buckeyes, writes Todd Porter of CantonRep.com.

Pittman was not alone in changing his mind. On ESPN.com, defensive tackle and ESPNU 150 recruit Tommy Schutt decommitted from Penn State and opted instead for Ohio State.

More could be on the way.

Read the rest and watch the video.

Steve Rushin at ESPN offers this poignant remembrance of a good movie and a great story and the cultural impact it made:

It is unclear why — or even if — men had tear ducts prior to 1971, for none had ever wept in public, though Walter Cronkite famously came close, removing his glasses in 1963 to announce the death of President Kennedy.

So it was a watershed event in every sense of the phrase when ABC aired its “Tuesday Night Movie of the Week” on November 30, 1971, and men failed to blink back tears in front of their wives and children and even each other for the first time in human history.

Forty years ago tonight, at 8:30 Eastern time, half of all television sets in use in America were tuned to the premier of Brian’s Song, a 90-minute made-for-TV film about the brief, unlikely friendship between Chicago Bears’ teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers.

Only 17 months earlier, Piccolo had died of cancer at age 26, leaving behind a wife and three daughters. Actor James Caan, who hated the hurried production schedules of TV, agreed to play Piccolo because he liked the script, by William Blinn, based on a chapter of I Am Third, Sayers’ little-read autobiography of 1970.

Read the rest.

Billy Dee Williams (playing Gayle Sayers) delivers a show stopping speech: