Category: Articles and Rants

2008-09 Bluejays – Risin’ to the Top, Part 2

On By @gtmoblueIn Articles and Rants

Rising to the Top

The 2008-09 College Basketball season is upon us. Thank God. 1st Things 1st: Go Creighton, Go Big Blue! Set the bar high, work your butts off, and EXCEED your expectations! Go Blue!

Now, on to the work at hand.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: A happy Sailor is a complaining/angry Sailor. By and large that saying is accurate – Sailors are always complaining and pissed about something. Often times the smaller the inconvienience, the larger the complaints. Sailors just Love to complain (b_tch), no matter the subject.

Others abound who just love to ‘Stir the pot’. Folks who are in love with creating brushfires, creating strife, inventing issues, and just in general who love being a pain in the rear. I know these folk well, as I generally belong to this club myself.

Some folk are just plain jealous. They are the ‘crabs in the barrel’ and can’t stand the thought of someone getting out and leaving them behind. Many of these types subscribe to a negative variant of ‘all folks are equal’. This variant states: We are better than you – and if we are stuck in this barrel, we will do all within our power to keep you in here with us.

Lastly, but not exhaustively, are the folk who hate success. They always look for the chinks in Lancelot’s armor, in order to attempt to negate his accomplishments. They look to take him down a notch or two. Whether UNC, KU, Creighton, Kent State, Murray State, Xavier, Appalachian State…it doesn’t matter. These folk will always seek to demean and denigrate successful programs, they always toss crap into the mix by way of belittlement of the coaches, their coaching systems, demeaning the players and their talents, facility shortcomings. You name it and the haters will attack it, in the name of bringing the successful down a peg or two – back to mediocrity. Many haters are not affiliated with less successful programs, although some generally are. Many haters are genetically predisposed to this sort of thing – they come from a long family lineage of losers. Hating successfulness is what they do.

Sailors, Pot-stirrers, Sandcrabs in the barrel, and Haters…just what, gtmo, do these folk have to do with the price of tea in China?

Vigilance and Fortitude.

In and of themselves the folks above are reasonably harmless. It is only when good folk do nothing that the effects of the sailor, stirrer, crab, and hater can slowly build up and infect good programs with their cancerous vitriole. Fans should be vigilant. We should challenge the bull that the four above spew forth and spread liberally within our midst. We should refute their assertions on every occasion, lest we fail to fully clean up their messes – we will have to excise their cancers later. These fearmongers must be kept in check. They are the beginning of the end. Many a good program (St John’s, DePaul, UNLV, Auburn, among others) failed to keep these types in check, and when coupled with some wellmeaning others (“Taking 1 or 2 small shortcuts” won’t hurt and the omnipresent “Win at all Costs”/Ends justify the Means), these programs collapsed like a house of cards.

Great programs start as growing programs. Growing programs cannot afford compromise. They MUST walk the narrow path-the straight and narrow. Fortitude and strength are necessary to maintain our walk on the way. Submitting to the fearmongers, taking ‘shortcuts’, and justifying any & all means to an end are all slippery slope areas which can fast result in disaster for growing programs.

Staying the Course.

We must stay on the road. Take it slow. Resist the urge to hurry the process – grow and prosper in the required, regimented, and ethically proscribed manner. Stay our course with fortitude and heart. Let’s do it the Right Way and enjoy the journey. Success, especially sustained successes, are best enjoyed warm – with a good wine & cheese.

Creighton is on the Right Way. Enjoy the Ride. Our Best is yet to Come!

Ode to Life, Learning, and Service – the Creightonian

On By @gtmoblueIn Articles and Rants

Ode to Life, Learning, and Service – the Creightonian

It was a day in late August…much like today. A day like any other…full of promise and full of toil. The sun was shining…it was a warm and bright. On the surface of things an ordinary day. Who could have known, who could have forseen, that THIS day was different – that it was a Sentinel day.

Late summer, warm and bright. The expectations, in 1975, were of the impending football season, of the coming autumn days – resplendent with the bright fall foliage, candied apples, pumpkins, and Red – everywhere. After all, Jim was in Nebraska. Who could have imagined, could have intuited, that this young man would embark on the journey of his lifetime?

There are always turning points, tipping points, along the Way of our lives. Many times we are so engrossed in our work-a-day activities that we hardly notice, if at all, the opportunities and pitfalls along the way. So entranced with our mundane routines, our courses of habit, our engrained, hipnotic, obedience to our social programming, we are often scarcely aware of the passing days – let alone the significance of one mere day. But there I was, having been back in Omaha for only six months, recently returned from serving in Uncle Sweets Navy, on the verge of enrolling into college.

The choice was between “West Dodge HS” a.k.a. as Omaha University, the local everymans’ school and the Rich Kids school – Creighton. As a Technical HS student I had often passed by and through the Creighton campus, to catch a bus to the Crossroads Shopping Center or to Aksarben, enroute to my part-time job at the Holiday Inn on 72nd & Grover. I rarely gave the school a thought as I passed the old football stadium wall along Burt St. I didn’t have a clue as to what transpired in the buildings on campus, although I would occasionally stop for bus change at the little ‘greasy spoon’ diner across 24th St from the main entrance. It was a different world…a foreign country within the confines of North Omaha…alien territory. As a local kid from North O, I never entertained curiousity about Creighton, such a place was not on the menu for me…places like CU were out of range of both my vision and my pocket.

It is funny how things can change. How providence (or God – depending on your perspective) can find you – no matter where you hide. Thanks to the military I soon found I now had options which were previously nonexistent. I had choices. Thanks to Uncle Sweets’ GI Bill, I was suddenly upwardly mobile. So it was that on this day, in late August of 1975, ol’ Doc found himself in the Frosh line, registering as an incoming student at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. Enrolling in college at the ripe old age of 24. This was the day that Jim became a Creightonian – a Bluejay! My life would never be the same. And I never looked back.

They say we are the Creighton Family. I am convinced that this is a true assessment of the case. We are a family. Like any family we have our strata, our categorizing of each other, our pecking order, but we also have a shared vision, shared goals, shared dreams. Like most families we have our disagreements, fights, and pet peeves; yet we also have times of playfulness, joy, and love. Like any family we have our triumphs and our failures, our victories and defeats, our hopes and our disappointments. Such is life. In the end…all we have is family, and God.

Once a Creightonian…Always a Creightonian. Once a Bluejay…Always a Bluejay!

And we Creightonians, like CU herself, are also much more than a summation of our parts. We have been sized & graduated by sifting, steeled by adversity, and refined by fire…so that we are prepared and qualified to work, to lead, to Serve.

May God bless and keep you – Creightonians All!

gtmo