Thanksgiving, Football and Memories

A few minutes ago I just drove past a location in North St. Louis where on January 1, 1969 I watched a team with the backfield that included Franco Harris – and Lydell Mitchell coached by 43 year old Joe Paterno defeat the Missouri Tigers in the Orange Bowl. The building is now gone, Joe Paterno lives on. That memory gave birth to this thread. With all due respect to Super Bowl Sunday, and New Years Day, no day is organically linked to football more than Thanksgiving. The Super Bowl attracts at a primal level core football fans and tangentially occasional fans, New Years Day games perhaps more tapped into the fabric of society because of the pageantry of the bowl games and that college alumni are stoked. But on thanksgiving, you get folks who are sitting down watching pro football games who spent the day watching their children, or playing a game of touch football and closing the day with close family giving thanks. Football on Thanksgiving is more personal, there is more connective tissue with who we are as Americans with football on the last Thursday in November than any other sport save perhaps baseball on July 4th. My fondest memory of Thanksgiving and Football is Thanksgiving 1971.

The first “Game of the Century” on my watch. This game has been called the Greatest Game ever Played – though the Texas/USC game a few years may push it. – this game featured tow unbeatens - Number 1 Nebraska ( number one in total defense and # 2 in offense) v Number 2 Oklahoma which was # 1 in total offense and # 2 in total defense. Nebraska was led by Jerry Tagge at OB, Jeff Kinney a college version of Ed Podalak and a 70’s version of Jeremy Macklin Heisman winner Johnny Rogers. Nebraska’s defense was led by All Americans Rich Glover; Oklahoma had the Heisman Runner up Greg Pruitt, and wishbone specialist Jack Mildren. The Cornhuskers won on a late touchdown 35-31. The amazing thing was that our family met at my great aunt’s house. The game started early that evening, and went on for some time. As the game was in the balance, I (along with my partner in crime – my mother) held up Thanksgiving Dinner for over 15 folks until the game was in the bank. I never knew I, or football had that much juice.

Questions:

1) What is your best Thanksgiving Football memory?

2) How did you develop loyalties to certain teams –esp. those not based locally?
For example in the 70’s I liked the Steelers, USC, Nebraska, I think for no other reason they were the rivals of teams supported by most of my friends or classmates.

3) What is your first football memory as a fan?

I recall watching the Tigers lose to Penn State, and have memories of the Chiefs beating the Vikings in the Super Bowl, but the first game that I recall having an emotional attachment was the Colts beating the Cowboys in 1971. I think I had read so much about Johnny Unitas, I wanted to see him but he had gotten hurt and didn’t play. I still rooted for Jim O’Brien to make the field goal and still recall John Mackey scoring on the tipped pass. In some ways that game was the end of an era.

Browner, Smarter, and Younger

So what shall we make of this historic election. Scripture says by ye fruit we shall know ye”. If one ascribes to the theory that it is much too early to get our collective arms around this election, then perhaps the better question is what is the fruit of the historic Obama victory? Pulitzer Prize author Thomas Friedman said the earth is “Hot, Flat and Crowded”. Keeping with that spirit, one may describe the fruit of the Obama coalition as Browner, Smarter, and Younger. In the afterglow of Barack Obama’s transcendent election, much is being said about the composition of the voters that were the cornerstone of his victory. Their vote speaks equally to the politics that it rejected as it did the politics that it embraces. While much was made of issues both real and nonsensical, what this election may have turned on was one word – Competence. Leaders have led this nation to war and/or opposed aggression, when a majority of Americans favored isolation (see Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt) but an assertive competent, case was made for intervention. During war, Presidents have stripped freedoms as sacred as Habeas Corpus, but they were supported by sound competent doctrine. (See Abraham Lincoln) - Thus the post 9/11 actions of the Bush Administration were not a historical aberration, but a constitutional nightmare. What has given Americans pause, if not downright outrage was the manner in which those decisions that were made, the lack of transparency, national security policy based on lies, and faulty documentation which has become the basis for American blood spilled in on foreign soil. Americans understand that the road to good intentions may have bumps in the road, but what she will not suffer - is incompetence.
Beyond the malignancy of competence lay three critical demographics. Brown, young and smart. Engaging this group is the Republican Party's 3 A. M. call. In 1984 the first year they had exit polls to capture the youth vote; those youth went GOP by 20%. Those 25-30 year olds are now almost 60. They are the core of the GOP coalition. An aging narrowing slice of the electorate. In essence, the Reagan Revolution planted the seeds of the generation of Republican voters which is now on the decline. If history repeats itself an Obama victory marks a reverse shift in power. To understand the roots of the Reagan Revolution – it was competence. Jimmy Carter the last Democrat prior to Barack Obama to get more than 50% of the vote was ousted politically due to a perception of lack of leadership at home with the energy (although his energy stances now seem to be vindicated) and the Iranian hostage crises. Young voters ironically went for the older Ronald Reagan, rejecting the perceived bumbling of the Carter Administration.
The heirs of Reagan, both named Bush failed to broaden his coalition, and one can safely say in terms of the younger Bush, constricted it. Now a generation later that coalition of Reagan is in tatters.
What can be gleaned from this? Reagan governed from the center right, but had a vision, while many can debate his triumphs and failures, none can say he failed to have an impact. Yet the Reagan victory gave rise to a longing within the Republican Party to reclaim the power of the Executive Branch lost during the Nixon years. Ronald Reagan gave rise to a rebirth in the imperial presidency, but it was the Administration of Bush 43 that revived it. The Reagan coalition supported by the hyper active Religious Right saw the, dalliance of President Clinton as an example of the erosion of the moral fabric, and 9/11 attacks as an attack on Christian values. They ultimately leveraged that latter emotion into the invasion of Iraq, the horrors of Gitmo, and the Patriot Act and other intrusions on American life. After the 2001 election the divide in America was more real than imagined, the Bush Administration's response to Katrina allowed for such intellection offerings such as “ would this have been allowed in Kennebunkport?’ – As Americans were shamed with an utter lack of competence, coupled with mind numbing disconnect by its leaders.
The candidacy of Barack Obama said enough - enough of division, enough of malfeasance, enough of incompetence. This election was not about small things, this time in our history is not about small things, this election is about deciding what really matters, and in 2008, it is the fruit of the Obama victory those who are Browner, Smarter, and Younger are the “deciders”. They have decided resoundingly that politics rooted in ideology won't work - a warning to both the right and the left - politics that is not competent and lacking transparent governance won't fly, politics that ignores the rich diversity of this country is outdated, and finally politics that continues to marginalize, and mortgage the youth will be rejected. In the moment it may not draw comparisons to the Boston Tea Party or Appomattox but as they say among the young, brown and smart - "don't get it twisted" we have witnessed a Revolution - Don't sleep on it.

Mr. President Elect

President Elect - Obama
My name is Phillip Warren Johnson I am a 49 year old independent voter and a volunteer in a Campaign for Change office St. Louis.

I was one of the 100,000 at the rally in front of the Arch.
From 1980 -2000 I either voted for a Republican or a third party candidate for President. I have never campaigned for any candidate at any level. All that changed this summer when I started volunteering in the local office. The office manager started a trend in which volunteers would post on the walls their reason for supporting the Campaign for Change. I put it off, because I knew that whatever I would say - had to represent – My Truth. When think back about the early days of the summer (it seems like years ago) I remember when the first time I heard you say in a speech “this election has never been about me, it’s about you!” That was for me, one of the turning points in the campaign. Now several months later, thinking about my rational for supporting the Obama campaign, I get it. Born in 1959, I would often as say an adult– “man if I was born twenty years earlier I may have gone to Woodstock like Russert, or saw Sinatra, or maybe Miles Davis or the Beatles. I may have seen Koufax, Ted Williams, or Jackie Robinson”.

But more importantly, I may have gone south marching with Martin, or campaigned for Bobby. America is many things, most of all it is a product of “movements”. Too often “movements” are spoken about in a derisive tone. Too often “movements” have been marginalized contemporaneously only to be vindicated later through the lens of history. Too often “movements” unleash the furies in those resisting change as they attempt to move heaven and earth to maintain the status quo. Yet more often than not, movements produce moments that become cornerstones of an epoch.

I was often envious of those who lived in the sixties because they seemed to be part of the last great American movement. When I was nine, two of the last social prophets our generation, were struck down. It was during those dark days of 1968 that my cynicism was born. Now 40 years later, after witnessing the worse of politics, divisiveness, and politics of distraction that too often gave birth to politics of distraction.


I had enough.


Then came the campaign for change. For the first time in 40 years, I heard a real voice for those left behind, but more than that, a voice to those tricked by politics of distraction into supporting policies of distraction. I heard a voice that said America can be great, but not with 20th century models of governance. I heard a voice that said America is still the greatest economy in the world, but we have to return to policies that support growth, and investment – not debt. I heard a voice that said corporate greed and lack of transparency got us into this mess, but now more than ever, personal accountability matters. I heard a voice that said America can be great, but we can’t be an agent for change abroad, until we unleash chance at home Finally I heard a voice that said America can be the great beacon of democracy, but that light of democracy must shine its brightest at home.


With all that is stake, racism, sexism, and intolerance and other pseudo issues will not resolve out economic crisis, nor will they bring about an end to two wars or make us safe. Coming together as a people is the great American destiny.
Deep inside me I was haunted by the incomplete promise of the 60’s. The mission of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King cut down too soon, created a vacuum which was filled with apathy and the belief that the American ethos would be one of permanent divisions. The campaign for Change, revived my spirit, and finally gave me a movement to be a part of. Senator Obama, you were right, this election has never been about you, but it is about the spirit of movement that has been all of us. This campaign allows us to channel our inner Patrick Henry, and Ida B. Wells to harness the dreams Robert Frances Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and honor to our ancestors by standing tall in this defining moment.


I want an America strong yet tolerant, innovative yet steady, wise, yet youthful, an America that respects the rule of nations and most of is respected throughout the community of nations. I believe this movement can restore America to her promise, this is my movement, actually as Americans this is our movement.
Congratulations and God bless!