How was your week?
Diana got caught up on the mowing now that the new mower deck is installed. She proudly announced after the first cutting that she finished without breaking anything. We were both pretty happy.
Transitions
Thursday, I took Youngest Daughter to NSU to get her moved in. It was equal parts nostalgia and grief. She’s moving out. We’re down to just one kid living at home. And yes, her room is still her room (unless she and Middle Son work something out to swap rooms). But she’s living somewhere else for the next nine months. It’s a new chapter in her life that doesn’t involve us.
I miss her.
Even though she was gone for most of eight weeks this summer while she worked at camp, this move to college feels so much more permanent. I know it’s not really forever. Heck, she came home Saturday to pick up a few things that we didn’t take Thursday. She’ll be back here for breaks when the dorms close, just like her sister stays with Youngest Son on her breaks.
Maybe it’s because the grandchildren are headed back to school, too, so the house is that much quieter now. Plus, Diana started official work-related activities this week as well, with new teacher orientation and a couple of professional development days.
Writing
I feel like I’ve got more time to myself now, but I’m not sure what to do with it. The obvious answer is, “Write.” And I’m working on that, to an extent. Gods know I’ve got enough fiction ideas to keep me going for the next few years if I’d get properly motivated.
I’ve also picked out a couple of topics for the Weekly Wednesday Blog Challenge, so watch for those. I hope Long and Short Reviews will continue the challenge next year, because even though I haven’t participated every week, I’ve appreciated the opportunity to write some guided posts.
I’m contemplating some more music-related posts, too. As I’ve been doom-scrolling YouTube, I come across plenty of new musical artists that I like, so I may try to write more Music For A Sunday Afternoon posts. I’m not sure how that will affect my regular weekly posts though. I typically post them on Sunday morning or release them on Saturday night and publicize them the next morning. Releasing another post just a few hours later seems like overkill.
Then again, do I have to stick to the Saturday night/Sunday morning posting times for my weekly posts?
I feel something of a duty to keep the MFASA posts to Sunday afternoons, assuming I keep that name and format. It started out as a kind of tribute to my dad’s radio program of the same name. The show started at 1:00 PM so when I decided on the series title, I tried to release those posts at 1 on a Sunday afternoon.
But when I started my weekly streak, I wrote them as kind of a summary of the previous week, so it made sense to post them on Saturday. Plus, I wanted to be able to write about Michigan games in a timely fashion, and they play on Saturday afternoon, so I couldn’t put a post up at 11 in the morning.
We’ll see what happens.
Football
The NCAA figuratively spanked Jim Harbaugh this past week. It was a nominal punishment at best over some recruiting violations back in 2019 and 2020. Sports media and aO$U fans gleefully announced the news: a four-year show-cause penalty that included a one-year-suspension. Show-cause means any school that wants to hire him as a coach in the next four years has to show the NCAA exactly why he’s the best person for that position. Even if a school hired him as a coach, he’d have to serve the suspension for the first year.
Show-cause is something of a death penalty for NCAA coaches. The Wikipedia entry says no coach hit with such a penalty has ever returned to coaching at the collegiate level.
That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
Except, what more could Jim Harbaugh want to accomplish as a college football coach? He’s got three consecutive Big Ten titles and an undisputed National Championship. He went out at the pinnacle of a college football coach’s career.
He’s 60 years old and just signed a five-year contract with the LA Chargers. I’d think he’s got little to no interest in returning to college football, at least as a coach. If he gets his Super Bowl ring with the Chargers, I could see him entertaining an offer from UM to come back as their athletic director for a few years. But as a coach? He’s done, and I think he’s happy with things.
This penalty was for Burgergate, so named because part of the investigation supposedly centered over him buying a recruit a meal when he wasn’t supposed to have contact with the recruit. There was more to it than that, of course. There always is.
The penalty seems personalized for him, too, because the NCAA had already penalized the school. But Harbaugh didn’t agree with that penalty, so he separated himself from that investigation, and the show-cause was the result.
Am I disappointed by some of the reports coming out? Yes, but maybe not as much as you’d expect. I am almost certainly guilty of putting Harbaugh on a pedestal. He was the ultimate Michigan Man, the former quarterback returning to the team to lead them to glory. Harbaugh projected a wholesome image to the public, or at least to fans like me. I didn’t dig all that deeply into things. I was content to watch the games and the pressers and the regular coverage and let things ride.
But I’m also realistic about college football. As much as I’d like to pretend that everything is above-board in college athletics, I know it’s not. I’ve never actually seen the sausage being made, but I’ve been around long enough to know that nobody is perfect. Sure, Michigan had something of a reputation as being the “Good Guys” when it came to following the rules. But I’ve come to realize that quite often, lots of rules are flexible. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but they are.
The soundtrack for this post has been IMY2.
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