Urban Flight

It's amazing to me when people blessed with ability and the drive to become great are able to have enough perspective to leave on their terms. In sports, the endgame is something many of our heroes have not been able to win. So many of the superstars that we've come to love have the need to hang around a little too long, sometimes damaging their legacy. Sometimes, players underestimate the impact of injuries that accumulate over time. We saw Larry Bird try to hang on with a bad back, but he was never able to get himself healthy enough to really challenge the Pistons' or Bulls' emergence. And sometimes, it's not a specific injury, but simply it's the ravages of time that slow our stars down. This coupled with the competitiveness that makes these people great makes for some uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous situations. We watched with sad feeling as a slower, heavier, less awe-inspiring Michael Jordan tried to come back with the Wiz. And even worse, we watched uncomfortably as an overmatched Muhammad Ali tried to turn back the clock against Larry Holmes, only to take a brutal beating while being too proud to quit.

Hanging on too long may be hazardous to your health.

Pop culture has create a bit of a cottage industry selling expensive throwback jerseys of iconic players with strange team colors and logos. This is always fascinating to see people wearing these jerseys, and you have to think for a second about what it is that you're actually looking at.

Evidently, Broadway is in Los Angeles (or perhaps it's moved to St. Louis).

Say Hey - one of the game's Giants... sort of.

On the flip side, a small handful of stars are able to either leave on top or step aside gracefully. We have the image of John Elway riding off into the sunset as a back-to-back Super Bowl champ after the 1998 season. Perhaps we think about Jim Brown running and receiving for 21 TD, 1872 yards, and winning his 5th MVP in 1965 at the age of 29. Or more recently, Barry Sanders stepping aside at the age of 30, after his 10th Pro Bowl season (out of 10 years played).

Leaving on top. Beats leaving in a heap.

Even among coaching icons, we see examples of coaches who hung on a little too long. Chuck Noll, the 4-time Super Bowl winning coach for the Steelers went 44-51 (.463) over his last 6 seasons, after going 149-97 (.606) in the years before that. Bobby Bowden is one current example, going 37-27 (.578) over last 5 seasons (pending this year's bowl game), after going 278-70 (.799) in the years before that. And this year, he was finally forced to resign by the powers that be at Florida St., in a somewhat sad situation.

Dadgum. Winning is harder when we have to play good teams.

In hoops, we see Gene Keady going 63-79 (.444) in his last 5 seasons at Purdue, after going 449-191 (.702) in the years before that. Even our own Lou Henson went 86-64 (.573) in his last 5 seasons at Illinois, after going 376-160 (.701) in his time before that (note, Lou also bailed out his alma mater, New Mexico St. after he retired from Illinois, and coached another 8 seasons at a .611 clip). But not everyone leaves on a down note. THE icon in coaching is John Wooden, who coached his last game in 1975, after winning his 10th national championship (which was the 8th out of the previous 9, and 10th in previous 12 years).

Now, Urban Meyer, one of college football's class acts, steps aside at the age of 45, with potentially another 10 years at the top of the game, making $4+ million per year. He finishes going to his 4th BCS Bowl, having won 2 of the last 4 national championships (and also went undefeated in 2004 at Utah), and leaves behind the nation's top incoming recruiting class. He gets to be one of the few who leave the game while their skills are still in tact, with his health and family still in tact, as well. That's the sort of move that the Board Room salutes.

Update: 12/27/09 - It appears that Meyer has been talked into taking a leave of absence, rather than simply resigning. So, this appears to be more akin to Coach K (no chance that I could spell his name w/out looking it up) taking a leave of absence back in the 90's. I think that this is the more practical option, though I do sort of like the idea of just saying, "screw it, I've been to the mountain top, and now I'm going to just hang out and be awesome."

-Chairman

Project Self: The Decade in Review

For most people, as they look back on a decade, it's a mix of wonderment, awe, joy, and sadness. They can think about the highs and lows, the memorable events, and the things they wish they could forget. As I think about the 20-aught's, I realize that I'm sort of boring.

Even in the 1990's, I had many interesting happenings in my life. We opened up the decade with the '90 Reds bringing in the decade by going wire-to-wire and sweeping the Bash ('Roid) Brothers, and winning a World Series. I had cruised through junior high, was getting great grades, was playing a lot of tennis, and actually was on the varsity chess team during my freshman year of high school. Then in 1993, we moved from Cincy out to Rotterdam, NY, where high school was a reasonably interesting time. In my junior year, I had my lifetime athletic highlight, I served an ace on match point to win my match deep in the 3rd set, which also won the last team match of the season, and locked up a division title in the process. I continued to get great grades, had the option to leave after my junior year to enroll at USC. Apparently, warm weather and hot SoCal chicks wasn't as appealing as shoveling snow and cruising through senior year. I ended up coming back for my senior year, hoping to repeat a championship run, way before people like Tim Tebow or Sam Bradford made it cool to do so. Much like those two, I also failed, as our team was mediocre, though I had a pretty good season. And my senior year was phenomenal. I got to use the car on a daily basis because I ended up taking a couple classes at the local community college during the day. Let's just say that I wasn't all that impressed at my first foray into higher education (well, sort of higher ed). But I had a 4 hour gap in my school day gave me time after my college classes, before I had to get back to school, which I took advantage of by going to the mall or going out to lunch. All in all, it was pretty sweet.

Interestingly, this also marked the first time that I had decided to hang around, rather than look for the next place to go (more on this later). In 1996, I left NY for the cornfields of Champaign-Urbana, IL, which was an even more interesting time. First, my grades became more adequate than good. Let's just say that I wasn't big on achievement once I hit college. In 1998, I spent 8 months in Louisville, KY working as a co-op for General Electric, and went on a number of adventures with a lot of cool people. I had some cool adventures with my roommates, and all in all really like my time in Illinois. All throughout this time, it was interesting how my New Year's Eve celebrations had evolved. In 1996 and 1997, I was still going home to NY for winter break, so we had some low-key nights with friends, playing cards, a lot like what we did in high school. I ended 1998 in Times Square, NY, staying with random people that my buddy had met online, and we had brought along this gigantic 6'4" blonde chick from Albany. And as I recall, we closed out 1999 in Illinois by throwing a big party that had like 60 people in there, having a great time.

Three locations, lots of life changes, as I went from being a kid to being... well, an older kid. Along the way, I got to wander to a lot of places, met a lot of great folks, all of which helped form the person that I'm going to eventually become. I was rolling out to West Virginia to go kayaking. Up to Cedar Pointe to ride ridiculously large roller coasters. Rocking it out in NYC for new year's. Playing wingman for my buddy while he dove into moving cars full of cheerleaders.

Then the new millennium rolled in. I was still in Champaign-Urbana, rocking it out. First, wrapping up my undergrad degree, and then starting my grad program in engineering. I got to spend a summer in Estes Park, CO (a great summer). Then I started an MBA program. Then I spent a summer in San Antonio, TX (another great summer). After that, I muddled my way through two more semester of mindless MBA classes, in the process started doing some research in consumer behavior in the spring of 2003, as I was wrapping up the engineering classes for my grad program. I kept doing the research, and then got into a PhD program in the fall of 2004. And I was still in Illinois. And that was how it was going to be in 2005. And 2006. And 2007. And 2008. And even the first half of 2009.

My New Year's traditions had gone from being in a different place every year to being in the same bar in Champaign every year. The start of the decade was a lot like the end of the 90's. The end of 2000 was another big party, only I was an attendee, and not the host. We spent the end of 2001 in the French Quarter in New Orleans getting terrible service at Pere Antoine's. Then we opened up 2002 watching our Illini get stomped by LSU in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day. And then starting in 2003, it was New Year's: Champaign, except for one year when we ventured out to Indy to rock it out. One of the recurring themes was that we always Dino in tow, for most of the Champaign and the Indy adventure. But then in 2007, he told me that he wasn't coming up for New Year's, and that's when I figured that he'd be getting married soon (and I was right... sucker :-).

In the 1990's, I moved location 3 times, got into new adventures. By 2003, I was sort of this equilibrium state. I just sort of did my own thing. I replaced the friends who actually decided to grow up and enter adulthood, with more like-minded folks who loved the extended adolescence that college afforded. But each iteration lost a little in the translation, particularly at the periphery. I was able to replace the handful of lasting friendships that I had, but the next tier of friends sort of faded away, numerically, and for those who were there, the signal quality was slightly degraded. And my New Year's adventures became less interesting, to the point where I was just going out just because that was what people were supposed to do (and I didn't have to wait in line at my bar).

I think that the end of this decade is a good thing for me. First of all, I've finally moved on from Illinois. The last 4 1/2 months of the decade have been spent in New Orleans. I'm no longer amongst those with "hidden unemployment," and have vaulted into a 95th percentile salary. It's not like I've grown up, but now I'm an older kid, with some grown up toys, like power drills, jigsaws, and firearms. Okay, not firearms. Yet (maybe when I'm 35 I'll be responsible enough to own a gun - probably not). I still need to figure out how I want to use all of this new found wealth (other than buying guns - and ammo). And I need to figure out how I want to relate to the people around me. One thing that I haven't really done, yet, is to reload those lasting friendships down in NOLA. And I suppose that we'll see if the 13 years spent on a college campus as a student has stunted my development as a person or irreparably damaged my view of people (which actually is sort of cool, if you think about it). Of course, this may not matter, since I'm still on a college campus, only now on the other side of the table. But what's great is that I've got a new decade to figure this stuff out... once I figure out what I'm going to do for New Year's Eve in a few days.

-Chairman