Finishing Your Career Like John Elway Is Beyond Dreaming

To the credit of Brock Osweiler, the young man has waited a long time to show us the skills that he brings to the table as a quarterback, but in reality this team could just as easily win the Superbowl with Trent Dilfer if it had to.

That is the name that comes to mind whenever you are talking about the "game manager" tag that usually only becomes a key aspect of the conversation when you have the kind of defense to make it part of the conversation.

Like Baltimore did back then, Denver has that defense, and no matter how great the shadow cast by the name Peyton Manning (his game these days is hardly shadow worthy), the biggest shadow of them all is coming from the Denver Broncos defense.

In many ways, it was the shadow of the defensive excellence that has made Peyton's mediocre play so very intolerable.  Now, it will be the thing that demands Osweiler repeat his no turnover Chicago Bears performance against every other team on the schedule and in the playoffs if he hopes to join Trent Dilfer on the list of  game managing, Superbowl champions.

Running the ball is not always about the yards.

To the back handed credit of Brock "The Unknown" Osweiler -and my repeated criticism of Peyton "The Audible King" Manning- sometimes just running the play that the coach called is the best play.

For over a decade now, coaches on teams with experienced quarterbacks have had to decide how much "Peyton Manning" freedom they would give their quarterback to audible in and out of plays as they see fit.  Manning was the blueprint, and in essence, coaches have had to decide whether the offensive coordinator or the quarterback would establish the offensive identity.
                            
In Denver, WE HAVE PEYTON MANNING and the limits on how much Manning gets to effect the play calling began.........never.  Well, it actually did start a little bit last year when our previous Offensive Coordinator (Adam Gase) would yell at Manning for changing out of run plays EVERY time a defense gave a fake look.
                   ______________

What's the biggest difference between a Denver Broncos team with Peyton Manning versus one without him?  PLAY CALLING
                   _______________

This year, Kubiak has played the tug-o-war of play calling with Peyton like John Fox and Adam Gase did because Kubiak is the head coach and the play caller too.  When Manning didn't stop turning the ball over, and just so happened to have enough of an injury to use as his excuse, Kubiak finally benched Manning and took 100% control over play calling.

In other words, the identity and experience of Kubiak as a play calling head coach has never really been seen by this team or this community until the Chicago Bears game.  Actually, even Kubiak was stuck in a post Manning fog until late in the second half when he finally started running the football and playing to the strength of the team- the defense.

He was adamant about that point in his post game speech, and he has actually claimed the necessity of it (ball control and defense) even when he didn't insure the consistency of it under Manning.

This team has had a defense and a running game for four years that deserved an 80% to 20% run to pass balance that Manning just do well.  The biggest difference between our defense in four years is an older Chris Harris Jr. and Aquib Talib versus Dominique Rodgers Cromardie who gave Denver easily as much as Talib has- minus the eye poking.

By maintaining an 80-20 balance from here until the final game, Denver should be the last team standing.  Sure, Kubiak could have vicarious dreans for Brock, the backup who could actually replace the legend and become one himself.  Many times in the past, Kubiak himself was cast in the role of replacement to John Elway during injury, creating similar controversy when Elway wasn't performing up to par. That should be the least of his concerns this time around. (unconfirmed reports from 104.3 The Fan radio show say Elway is actually more in favor of Osweiler than is Kubiak)

Whether Osweiler plays well in a few games and not so well in others, creating a way for Manning's smooth return, or if Osweiler lights up the sky and blocks Manning from an easy return to action, THIS TEAM MUST RUN THE BALL.....PERIOD.

Personally, I would prefer a healthy Manning with 20 years of experience and knowledge to finish out our 80-20 run to victory so long as the men in the locker room agree with me.  Running the ball more consistently would not only make Manning appear to be a better quarterback, it will make him a better quarterback.

If the Denver Broncos are to win in the end, whoever hands the ball off will still only be credited for being the game manager of an all-time great defense.  That won't be great for the Manning legacy, but it will beat the heck out of not winning at all or winning with Osweiler handing it off 80% of the time instead.

Trying to finish your career like Elway did is a fairy tale, and fairy tales only happen once.

Tolerance Was Always Too Low A Standard

We the People, in the hopes of forming a More Perfect Union, have settled for a society of tolerance.

Wasn't it tolerance that created segregation?

What's the problem with tolerance?

Let me provide an example or two.

Did you know that the United Nations believes that we can eliminate AIDS by 2030
(AIDS epidemic can be eradicated by 2030)

AIDS that is, not HIV as a virus can never be truly eradicated.  If the difference between those two confuses you still, it is because we've moved from laughing at the word during my 1987 graduation benediction speech, to now probably knowing someone who lives with or died from AIDS, yet that's about the extent of our progress.

People rarely die from AIDS anymore but millions of US still have no clue about the advances in medicine, or the continuing risks that still exists relative to the disease.  If we understood AIDS and didn't try to tolerate it as only a homosexual or drug addict problem, I would not be still shaking my head 30 years later at the stupidity of such a smart nation.

Several of our presidential candidates are partially victims of this disease of tolerance that has infected us into apathy, while some are using moments of real humanitarian crisis to tap into the unfounded fears of people.  How do I know these are unfounded fears?

Because every migrant who already risked their lives in leaving home would hardly feel slighted by ANY help that America's congress could agree to. Forget Syria for a moment. Any idea of fixing our Mexican immigration issue would be 100% better than nothing at all or dying in the desert.  Yet, a basic agreement driven by human understanding is exactly what got Eric Cantor fired from politics forever.

What exactly did we hope to achieve in becoming a more tolerant nation?  A marriage that looks something like the separate bedroom marriages that used to exist prior to this push to be tolerant?

I wish I didn't have this happy sadness every time thousands of people crowd around Donald Trump to listen to him lie about thousands of New Jersey Muslims having a tailgate style party over the fall of our Twin Towers.

To Trumps credit (and his thousands of followers), a Washington Post article helped to generate the confusion that Trump is capitalizing on now.  The article was wrong, but it wasn't unseemly to capitalize on our misdirected anger back then, and it's obviously not so hard to do now either.

My sadness with all of this comes from all of the living that we've done since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with so little change to show for it.  My happiness comes from the reality that most change begins when the bottom becomes clear.  In my mind, this is exactly what you get when you allow tolerance to be the height of your social pursuit.

Plenty of US have lived with this misconceived notion that WE actually used the tears from watching Martin and Malcolm and those Kennedy brothers die for a more perfect union, to actually become a more perfect union.

Mostly WE pursued tolerance.

Tolerance like they had in seemingly Happy Days or the world of Leave It To Beaver. When folks stayed together forever, but not always in the same bedroom and not with the magnetic passion that created the union, but with the tolerance and acceptance that you  probably won't be too bothered by someone who sleeps in another room.

Tolerance has value- but it doesn't insure understanding.  Respect is cool too, but it wasn't the reason for the orgasmic bliss that built this great family of people United by a common belief and emboldened by an acceptance of the intense necessity of understanding family to perfect the Union and insure the hope for tomorrow.

If WE the People are agreeable to tolerance, WE are essentially retreating to our separate rooms.
If nothing else, Trump is helping us see how very little WE have learned about each other while retreating to our own rooms in this pursuit of tolerance.

Even back in the day, Dad always needed Mom to help adorn the space while Mom probably needed Dad to redecorate from time to time without back pain to follow.  Trump is uncovering our segregated dusty rooms and the damage to our carpets from not redecorating and moving things around a bit.  He's also showing how separate is rarely equal and how ignorance is rarely bliss.

Plenty of Americans can totally relate to every sentiment that is driving the GOP presidential election leader, while plenty of the rest of US who mistakenly believed WE were better than this are witnessing the sad truth.

The Truth Is Never Bad 

Leave It To Beaver didn't prepare us for neighbors like Archie Bunker or George Jefferson, although Archie and George tried like hell to prepare us for today by saying
"Hey!...Like it or  not, this is America too"

Meanwhile, most of us who could, ran to recreate that Leave It To Beaver dream that never was as valuable as it appeared in the first place.  It was fairly tolerant, but segregation will always be tolerant.

Today, WE the People still need integration and understanding to form a more perfect union.  Tolerance has never allowed for too much integration, or the red states and suburbs of America wouldn't be crafted as they are. The word suburb should basically mean "that community where diversity doesn't exist".

Show me a truly integrated community with lots of race mixing and racial understanding and I'll show you an expanding urban trap in which tolerance is still the agenda even if understanding is messing things up a bit and driving the red to be purple or blueish. Everywhere else, tolerance doesn't have to matter as much, and to hell with understanding.

Even WE who claim to be understanding are fooling ourselves a bit and need to recognize what Trump is revealing to us each and every day. WE are all just as confused about each other as ever, and more shocked by our lack of progress than WE should be.

Plenty of nations practice tolerance to some degree or other.  This more perfect union dream demands a new and different understanding.

Call It What You Will. It Ain't Freedom.

France is moving to enact sweeping powers that would allow State of Emergency measures against the potential of terror that looms throughout Europe, but is primarily being forced upon France. Disregard, if you can, that porous borders in Europe make such measures somewhat futile.

Back here in America, 31 Governors of this great nation have decided to publicly announce a block of any Syrian refugee's into their states in the wake of a potential Syrian connection to the ISIS claimed massacre in Paris.

Disregard, if you can, that temporary Visa's are somewhat easy for any European to get when seeking to set foot on American soil.  Forget as well that any state in this union offers instant and unfettered access to every free human being that lives in any other state.  Blocking Syrians from 31 states would only work to keep those 31 states from the potential economic benefit as America vets and scrapes the cream off of the top, taking the best of Syria's migrants. Between this blocking of Syrian's and the decision to block Medicare expansion, GOP governors will soon be notorious for two of the worst economic decisions in the history of state politics.

Let's advance our American imagination right into the realm that France is now,  taking a State of Emergency vote that could soon allow them random search and seizure rights as well as other emergency infringements upon the rights of its citizens.  If what we fear is really worthy of the concern that some have expressed, WE the People should be arming ourselves against this fear just as some American's say WE should.

What will Freedom look like in the future?

Such ideas rose as suggestions again when last our theater's were under arrest and our schools were under attack.  Some American's even think we should place more guns inside of our schools so that kids can make it home safe each day.



Home Of The Free.........Land of The Brave?

We know ourselves to be the brave people of America, the most free land on earth.  Freedom is our namesake.  Our flag stands for Freedom and our way of life is supposed to reflect it.

If our best hope for safety is the hope that WE never have to use the gun that is hiding on our hip, then why carry it?  If you really anticipate having to thwart terror before you finish a lifetime in America, aren't you leaving home with the real acceptance of being the dead victim of terror or worse, a mentally or physically wounded survivor of it?

When the day comes that we choose to arm ourselves just to go to the grocery store- or we plant some pistols in our schools so children can learn without worry of gun play- we can choose to call our way of life anything that sounds reasonable.

Just don't call it freedom. 

Isn't All Terrorism An Attack On Western Freedom?

If what we have happening in our schools, and theaters, during a live remote on the morning news and now Paris is not terror, then I wonder what the survivors who walked away alive call it?

For some reason, we'd prefer to think of middle eastern Jihadists as the only face of terror because its not so glamorous to search for terror's face and keep finding mirrors.

We have known for some time that ISIS has a significant number of European nationals and even a few Americans as well.  The infamous Jihadi John is (or was) a British born terrorist of Kuwaiti ancestry.

France is reporting their recent killers to be of Syrian decent, but the final report is yet to be discovered.  Each of these killers could have migrated to France for the sake of terror, but some of them could have already lived there or born there similar to the Charlie Hebdo killers. Assuming Paris is now the home of home grown Jihadists, American terror too has ample examples of home grown terror that pre-dates today's crisis in Paris or the theater massacre in Aurora.

Apparently, seemingly sane foreign killers causing terror for religion or politics versus our own presumably crazy sons that we keep raising and grooming to kill us one day is some consolation to this nightmare for some.

Personally, I can't see it.

I also can't see how Jeb thinks his brother or any other president has kept us safe with the nightmare of domestic terrorism seemingly a weekly occurrence. Or how "taking it to them" (ISIS) will uncover the places they exists or the places that they can go. Genocide of terror sounds comforting, but no one has figured how to destroy an ideology with weapons of war.

Just because we don't count massacres like the 147 students killed in Kenya or Columbine as terrorism doesn't mean we're right. Al Shabaab, the group who took credit for the Kenya killing, took care to kill only non-Muslims. 

Sometimes terror will be foreign born killers who make their way onto hostile soil in order to do harm to the Western way of life wherever it rests comfortably. Mostly it will be native born citizens with free and unfettered access to kill. 

This is a war against Western comforts and sensibility, and it is being waged on many fronts.  When next it happens in America, we will hope that it is one of our own again instead of the likes of ISIS or some other political terror group.  If it happens abroad they will hope its ISIS instead of the homegrown variety that we prefer over the mere thought of foreign invader terror.

I would simply like to remind those who won't be ducking any bullets soon, that survivors of terror really don't care to qualify their fear of our diminishing freedoms, even as overly anxious news reporters stick a microphone in their face and demand that they do.

MU President Steps Down, Football Team Steps Up

Some call it the Ferguson effect while others thinks its a full fledged revolt from the prisoners.

In this uniquely special scenario, the prisoners are the primary source of revenue for the entire institution, and they are actually in a position to quit work without retribution.

That was the case when 32 of the University of Missouri football team players decided that they had to take a stand relative to the matter of racial inequality on the campus. I mention those 32 because even the head coach and the rest did not get on board until it was clear that they couldn't play without 32 teammates.

Apparently, Mizzou is the type of campus where an occasional poop swastika gets smeared on the walls of the campus as a mean message of hate towards those who walk the campus in Columbia, MO with a little to much melanin.  Hearing shouts of nigger are also a part of campus life.

When such matters were presented as a grievance, now former campus president Tim Wolfe has been quoted as saying that the matter of racial intolerance on campus was mostly a matter of "perspective".  When students attempted to block president Wolfe's car after a homecoming parade in an effort to force him to address their grievances, he did not exit his car and had the students removed by arrest instead.

 News reports seemed to present an unruly student body that could not break the will of Wolfe who steadfastly refused to step down despite repeated requests to do so.

Suddenly, there became a threat of no football.  In the wake of Wolfe's recent relent, we've come to discover that campuses all over the land have feared this day, when football players would recognize the power of their position and make a strong economic play towards change.

In the wake of Wolfe's recent relent, we've also discovered that most campuses consistently keep football players and other big sport athletes free and clear of the general public on campus.  They have a special tunnel to access special meals and special dorms that keep them special and separate from the normal folks on campus.  In effect, they have buffered them from the problems that plague everybody else.

Until now.

Now, the money machine has forced the decision makers to move to keep the money machine up an running.  It would be awesome to imagine that this change was addressed on the merit of moral impact and not economic impact.  In reality, morality did not play a single role at all, at least not as it relates to those who finally fixed this problem.

The Wolfe Is Gone!

In other words, the institutional failures that make MANY college campuses racially unsavory are widespread and still unchanged.  My daughter, who attended school at a nearby school in Missouri, almost dropped out of her really expensive private university as a result of the weight of racial imbalance that she endured for four years of schooling.

The school of Michael Sam, the first openly gay football
player, has now disrupted the national racial Richter scale.
Will other big sports schools follow suit or do major
sports universities move to make the racial fixes first?
Stay tuned. 

On that campus, it was nearly shock causing for anyone to meet my daughter and accept that she was there on an academic scholarship and not to play sports.  By the time she exited her campus and the state of Missouri for the last time, she felt like making a t-shirt with words on both sides of it reading:

"NO!  I do not play on the basketball team.

At that campus, a sports revolt might not have had the same impact because sports are not to the money generators that they are on big time campuses.  At that campus, however, black students have complained like they complain all over the land, even before the shake up at Mizzou.

So, for the mass majority and for a little while longer, nothing is likely to change much at all. Yet, at Mizzou and every school with a similar racial issue, the die has been cast and the blueprint is complete. If you really want to turn things right side up, you might need to turn it upside down and shake a little. If nothing 
happens right away, keep shaking 
until it does.