The Curious Case of a Dozen or More Running Backs - Modern Day Warriors, Bruisers

    Most countries do not have them, because most countries of 2026 do not have American football. They wear helmets, and sport large pads for the shoulder and body parts. Having worn these protective gears briefly in my life, I know that I was surprised how much of the body was not covered very well.

    Football delivers bruises, welts, contusions, scrapes, scratches, tears, concussions, and worse. Broken bones, messed up spines, torn muscles and tendons. It is a sport of blood, a sport for non-wimps.

    Perhaps the running back must be the toughest. He, of all the chess pieces of the grid iron, must bear the brunt of pounding and hounding. Run, catch, or block, the tailback or halfback or fullback must withstand adverse force and punishment.

    Some become famous, others made themselves infamous. I can name a few. You will know a few, while others barely ever were known more than fifty miles from my house.

    Let us see:

    1. Start with OJ? No, he deserves less acclaim. I will start with men, or young men, of more honour.

    Bobby Howard. He was tough, he was strong, he was Black. He was a workhouse of the Indiana Hoosiers. They as a team were not good, not competitive enough to go to bowls in the early 1980s, but Bobby was a fighter. I liked him. Perhaps I saw him in person or on TV as a young middle schooler, when my dreams of playing the sport myself were still extant? I cannot remember. I do rememember listening to his calls of runs and catches on the radio. In my room, maybe from a car or my dad's van radio. The ubiquitous IU radio man calling the plays...*

    I loved that guy. Those long suffering Hoosiers. Bobby went on the pros, did not do much there at the higher level. But he was an early hero running back of mine.

    2. Lynn Churchill. More on him later. Purple Panther.

    3. Randy Perine. Also a Panther.

    3. Whats-his-name. Deems. Charles? I will get to it, in my year books.

    4. Anthony Thompson. Wow. Amazing runner. Bruiser. My guy.

    5. Emmitt Smith.

    6. Barry Sanders.

    7. Ernest Lukes. A high school guy.

    8. Vai Sikahema.

    9. Lakei Heimuli.

    10. Jamal Willis.

    11. Luke Staley.

    12. Who to stop with? The killer? The brazen murderer? Yes, none other than Orenthal James, the Juice and airport luggage hurdler: Simpson. RIP his two unfortunate victims.

    Most running backs in the NFL, and college, and high school, do not wind up felons.

    Some do.

    More later.

    Blog it.

    

If God Exists, Does He Want All His Children to Be Holy and His Servants

    In short, yes.

    God does exist. I cannot absolutely prove it. Love and memory exist. Safet to say those are provable.

    He wants us to care about each other, take care of each other.

    He wants us to be priests and priestesses. All of us are holy.

    We are His, He wants us to be like Him.

    There is the Christian thing. Jesus came and left His impact.

    Son of God the Almighty to us Christians. Jesus is Him in the Flesh.

    A bit more to take in.

    Then, there are the prophets. Many prophets of old.

    Any current ones?

    Some of us think so.

    God speaks to us through current oracles, if you will.

    The Jewish have their own different beliefs and worship practices. They preceded Christianity.

    Later came Islam, from the verses of Mohammad.

    Siddhartha Gautama, and the Indian gurus and maharashtras and holy folks and scriptures of that subcontinent filled the holy thoughts of billions over time.

    There are others. Local shamans from the Maidu of Northern California to the Mapuche of Southern Chile, to the beliefs and traditions and practices of the Inuit lining the entire Arctic.

    So many. The Shinto of Japan, or the Confucious and Daoist of China.

    There on the non- Thereveda and Mahayana of Mongolia and Tibet. The friend of my daughter explained how they act or believe differently.

    Nietsche said "God is dead", as reiterated by that same daughter, the oldest of mine, but I replied to her that his quote is misattributed or misinterpreted. 

    Yes, I could break it down. I think.

    For those of us God believers.

    He does want us to be holy.

    And serve Him. And care for all.

    Yes, on these precepts we can agree.

    God or not.

My Week of Football. My Lifetime of Observations and Fantasies.

    I tried to play on my 7th grade football team way back in 1980 something. '83? I guess it was the summer after Return of the Jedi. A generational motivator or fantasty multiplier.

    There's that. Science fiction and fantasy and spectacle taking up many of my waking, sub-conscious, and likely unconscious hours. Dwarf Pine Ewoks burning needles at Camp Maumee.

    Trying to create and expand and expand and dream.

    Write, explore, share, dream.

    You name it.

    We dreamed of being football stars, Lance Allen and I. We liked throwing and catching. Being teammates and winners. That was fourth and fifth grade. It was a kinship, and it was not entirely fair. We stayed together; he was my guy on the play ground football field. He had the cocky kind of Han Solo attitude and posture. I was a little more like Luke. Skywalker, maybe. Even though I had the brown hair and Lance was more blonde.

    We drempt of being football players. I could catch and run. He could throw and bark out winning plays and calls. I could be a back-up thrower, too. But he was the boss. I liked being the go-to guy at the end.

    6th grade came and went, and 1982 slid into 1983. In 6th grade at Binford Middle School we sat out from football. At least I did. We did not have the same recess time like at Elm Heights. Plus, they used a real football, which sent my friend Seth Berry to the hospital in an awful way. But recess right after lunch in middle school was not conducive to playing all sweaty and dirty like in elementary school. Problems with staying with the sport that year?

    1. I had nicer clothes, like Levis and Polo shirts. They wer expensive and I did not want to rip them up or soil them. Plus, the blue jeans were tighter, and it was not easy to move and run in them. Did I wear the right foot gear to play after lunch? Maybe, but my arch supports were a thing... Which came up as an issue in the hot summer of 1983. The summer after my parents had broken up, and I got lazier. Fatter, softer, weaker. My brain and my body entered the world of confusion that comes with trying to grow up and trying not to cry when we sang about eternal families at church on Sunday.

    Sounds like pathetic excuses or pity party pleas, but that is the way it was. How could I not be affected? My sisters and I dealt with it differently. It was not great or easy. I resported to my comic books, other reading, mostly science fiction, I guess staying up late in the summer and watching David Letterman. Things that would carry over. Not a ton of friendships, but some. Scouts, church. Some neighborhood buddies. But their parents were not divorcing. And I was the most religious one, but where did that leave me and my family?

    Not that great, that faith and religion, huh? Not good enough to keep your parents together, even though we proclaimed it all the time.

    Not a pity party. Reason. Logic. The absence of logic and reason.

    So there was football, but then there wasn't.

    I put on the cleats, the helmet, and the pads for week.

    But I walked away. I slinked away. It was painful.

    Lance, my Captain Solo, left first. Not all his fault. Things and people move on.

    The coaches should have kept us, but they did not know or try too much.

    The experience was not meant for us.

    More later.

    Grateful to think of it on a Friday night while some of my loved ones are at the high school game nearby.

Fighting Off the Big, Dark, Monster - Spooky Tales and Thoughts and Premonitions

    It is October, baseball is going on. The playoffs and cool nights under the klieg-type lights. My Sox are still going. They are a bridge to my childhood. Topic for another post.

    But we have some scary thoughts this month, as we can in any month. Ghouls and goblins, phantoms and ghosts. Even real life killers and thrillers.

    Here's a possible scary one: what if each of us, or at least some of us, have some mental cloud or depression or awful demon (metaphorically or symbolically) that is being kept at bay? And it is simply waiting us out?

    My mom suffered from depression some times. At times kind of severely. I have known others who have battled deep, dark, stretches of the mind and soul. Not an easy thing.

    Maybe those things are welled up inside somewhere, waiting like a monster.

    Like Moby Dick chasing down Ahab, only Ahab thinks that he is the one to get the whale.

    Who is chasing who? Or whom is being chased?

    How deep and how far in the marvelous yet terrifying depths do the monsters lurk?

    Spooky thoughts for a cool and dark October evening.

    Happy Hallow's Eve.

    All month long. Or maybe all our lives.

    Love you, mom. The guy who used you against me in an interview for the government is the bad guy, not me and you.

    We are the good ones. Above the foam and the fray.

 

 It is Hard to be Mainstream because We Are not Mainstream - A Peculiar People

    My senior year of high school I tried... No, I was a junior in my honors English class. I tried to write up, mostly on my home computer, what or how or something about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Latter-day Saint. My kind or brand of Christian. A Mormon.

    I struggled. I thought. I though hard, but distanced myyself. I procrastinated. I had a few flashes of brilliance, or at least ideas. The end result was not great. I wanted to make it great. I came up short. I needed help from others, most likely. More close friends or people who got me, or would help.

    Story of my life, perhaps.

    No chances to blog back then.

    At the age of 48 I was having a debate with some co-workers in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana if being of my religious faith was to be a minority. No, they said. Not a minority. However, part of me countered that statement. We are a minority. A religious minority, for sure, but not an ethnic one. There are differing types of minorities.

    Racial minorities. Linguistic minorities. Socio-economic minorities. Cultural minorities. Females in the military, is a minority.

    We Latter-day Saints are a combination of minorities. Religious, cultural, ethnic in a way. 

    We are not mainstream, though we want to be in most ways. But our rules and lifestyle precludes us in many ways.

    We want to be in the world but not of it. Not worldly.

    We wish to be a peculiar people, and a light on the hill, as the the Bible has prophesied.

    Like the Jewish, we wish to fulfill God's will and truths and be His people.

    That is the way it is, and how we strive to be.

I Had Some Really Good Ideas for Writing Some Posts

    I had them in my head a few hours ago, or less. But I came home, took a nap, and now I am struggling to remember. It had to do with places lived, or lives lived.

    One was about "Visiting Russia in the 1980s" ! Yes, I can remember that. What else? Visiting Russia...

    How about the one time champs of my my schools?

    Hmmm... Presidential elections or persons?

    Okay, let's go with Russia.

    But, yes! "Visiting Africa" (Eggypt and stuff like that.)

Bill Garret, Oscar Robertson, and 365 Plus Schools of Basketball Opportunities

Bill Garrett, Oscar Robertson, and 365 Plus Schools of Basketball Opportunities

    It has come to more recent attention to me that Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of Indiana. More specifically, Indiana Univiersity. No coincidence, likely, it was a year after Jackie joined the Dodgers. back in the days of Brooklyn.

    The story goes that big, tall, skillful Bill Garrett, the best player in the state of Indiana coming from the ever popular high school level, was desired to play the game at the college level. Enter the dilemma. Indiana, which was a member of the Big Ten Conference, did not allow Black/African-American players in their league. IU wanted the best team, not some artificial construct of sport based on race. Or, rather, based on skin color. We are one human rice. Science proved it, over the fascist killers of Germany or elsewhere, killing a couple hundred thousand G.I.s a short time before.

    

    Garrett played for IU. Indiana broke the rules. Hurrah. Let's here it for fair play and meritocracy. Jesse Owens proved that in Berlin in 1936. Hello.

    While he did not lead them to a championship at the national level his immediate successors did in 1953. Maybe Garrett helped them get their NCAA ultimate victory during his tenure of play in Bloomington? I would think so.

    Oscar Robertson graduated from Indianapolis Crispus Attacks in the late 1950s. Apparently IU was too racist in those years under those coaches and environments, so he chose Cincinnati across the state border. Lucky Bearcats. Oscar was the best of his generation.

    These are gifted and talented Black men. Part of our shared history, glory, and joy.

    In 2026 we celebrate fetes and games in basketball more and more. 365 Division I schools, places of academic and professional training and potential, sponsor that many teams, giving thousands of Black, white, and all manner of backgrounds a chance to play, learn, matriculate, and succeed.

    Nothing is perfect, but even the smallest schools provide more opportunities to win, succeed, soar, and grow. Succeed on all levels. 

    This goes for women of all backgrounds. 

    This is good.

    We love and cherish basketball for all reasons. The pure thrill of the competition, the money generated, the spectacle and unity offered, the communities built and expaned.

    The schooling, as Bobby Knight would emphasize.

    Opportunity meets effort.

    It may be beside or on a hardwood court, but the nets and hoops and backboards give way to the worlds of hope and prosperity.

    From the 1940s till now, and long into the future. For Turks, Slovenians, Chinese, and on.

    Which school did your player attend?