Lights Out College Football

This past week left no uncertainty regarding the season of the year. I sweat buckets while inhaling bottled water with triple digit temperatures making my old frame wither every time I go to douse a plant outside to keep it from simply igniting in the afternoon sun. For all the scorching going on in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, this part of the world looks very mild when you compare it to the climate bearing down on Happy Valley, Pennsylvania where the campus of Penn State cooks under the hostile glare of a stunned world.


I cannot imagine anyone in America not knowing something about this story. A former top assistant coach and key recruiter for the Penn State football program, Jerry Sandusky, gets convicted on 45 of 48 counts brought against him for  various crimes of sexual abuse against children.  Mr. Sandusky created a nonprofit charitable organization The Second Mile in 1977 to help at-risk children, some of the children became victims of the founder's sexual abuse. Sandusky also adopted six children, and one of them has also alleged he was sexually abused, although those charges were not part of the trial which concluded in June 2012. The convictions were for crimes committed from 1994 to 2009. Terrible crimes, and chillingly reminiscent of the many crimes against children some Catholic Priests have been convicted of this past decade. 


And then we have Penn State University, and its total failure to do anything about these crimes 14 years after being alerted of serious sex abuse allegations being levied against one of their top assistant football coaches. The men at the top did nothing. Not the revered coach of Penn State, Joe Paterno. Not the Athletic Director of Penn State, Tim Curley. Not the Vice-President of Penn State, Gary Schultz. Not the President of Penn State, Graham Spanier. Not the Penn State Board of Trustees who oversee the University and all its policies and finances. As a matter of fact, after the first serious allegations at the university surfaced Jerry Sandusky was "allowed" to retire with full privileges and unlimited access to all campus facilities while getting a nice monetary parting gift of $168,000.  According to CNN, "Top university officials said they had never known Penn State "to provide this type of payment to a retiring employee." 


In its effort to get ahead of the crisis to blunt even more outrage, Penn State hired former FBI director, Louis Freeh, to investigate and report fully on the matter. The Freeh Report is 267 pages of condemnation of the University and the men who were entrusted to know and do better while running a state funded university. There are many who want to dig much deeper into this sordid saga of arrogance, abuse of power and greed, and think the current list of cut-out men ( a dead coach and three former executives of the university) is much too small. 


All I know is that justice works very slowly in this country, and many trials will be forthcoming in both the civil and criminal courts with lots of sordid details to digest for years. What penalty will Penn State, and more specifically its vaunted football program, pay for such big crimes against young people who needed protection not sexual abuse. What the headlines and most of the pundit talk around the country regarding this story fail to acknowledge, or do so quietly with the full understanding that nothing will ever really change, is that this story just encapsulates the nation's brutish football culture that campuses of high schools and colleges have created while pursuing the gold that media conglomerates dangle like rabbit decoys in front of administrative greyhounds running in circles around a track. 


A few weeks back I read a great Chuck Klosterman article on football and why Chuck finds it so fascinating today. Within this outstanding Grantland on-line column is a link to a debate on whether or not to ban football from college campuses. The debate comes courtesy of intelligence 2 (Squared) US on the New York University campus. The debate is lengthy, clocking in at nearly 2 hours. I've watched it three times, and have come away each time more convinced minor league football with big league revenues attached to it has no place on the campuses of our American universities.   


The arguments from the two panel advocates, Tim Green and Jason Whitlock,  who want to keep the game alive and well on college campuses focused on how the game builds character and team work. The two talked up the monetary gains for the colleges, and the benefits players  receive for their devotion to the game. The thrust of the two panelists, Malcolm Gladwell and Buzz Bissinger, for banning the game from colleges and universities dealt with head and body injury issues to the athletes and how the economics works against most players and the schools with football programs throughout America. 


Buzz Bissinger wrote the exceptional Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team And A 
Dream. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the New York Times best-seller, Tipping Point: How Little Things Make A Big Difference. Gladwell is a New Yorker Magazine contributor columnist and has written 3 other best selling books. Tim Green is an NFL analyst on the Fox Network, and has authored 21 books of fiction and 3 non-fiction book titles. He is a lawyer who practices law in the state of New York. Jason Whitlock is a sportswriter for Foxsports.com and is a contributor to ESPN. The fascinating element to the debate procedure finds all those in attendance asked to give an indication on their leanings before the debate happens. Are they in favor of the proposal, against the proposal or are indifferent regarding the proposal? At the close of the debate the audience weighs in again with how they view things after hearing the debaters. This topic has been the biggest intelligence 2 (Squared) debate thus far.  


The results of the debate surprised me, as did some of the statistics the panelists offered into evidence as support of their positions. This debate took place after the allegations surfaced at Penn State surrounding Jerry Sandusky, but before his trial started. 


A Sports Illustrated column from March of 2011 written by Jeff Benedict and Armen Ketayian explored a twist on the Top 25 ranking of college football teams. These are the top poll  ranked football programs of 2010 and the number of players in their programs with criminal records  playing for those universities. Pittsburgh came away with the top ranking for utilizing the most players in their program (22 players) with a criminal background. Iowa and Arkansas tied for second with 18 apiece. Lo and behold, what team do you think tied with Boise State for third place in using players with criminal backgrounds? Penn State you say? Yes, indeed.


Let's not kid ourselves here in thinking just the top 25 teams utilize players with criminal backgrounds, or find their student athletes engaged in alleged criminal behavior. The people in Missoula, MT are living the Happy Valley, PA nightmare as the Justice Department investigates multiple rape allegations from 2010, and prior. The identity of this town of 86,000 in Western Montana has been all about their Grizzlies football team.  The university had more than 80 reported rapes over the past three years. Probably not the learning environment message you want to employ to recruit bright young people to your campus would be my guess. 


Here in the Southern San Joaquin in September of 2011 there were two dozen Fresno State Bulldog football players implicated in a welfare fraud case involving the Department of Social Services.  And the beat goes on.


It would be one thing if all colleges and universities with football programs made money to help underwrite tuition costs and other school fees, but 42% of all collegiate schools with football programs lost on average $2.9 million for 2010 according to a report by the NCAA. A USA report found students footed a $795 million bill for sports programs in 2009, which was up 18% from 2005. 


I find it absurd seeing football coaches salaries at the astronomic levels they are today. Knowing Jeff Tedford, the coach at Cal, is the highest paid UC system employee, and the highest paid state employee to boot, makes me want to take a serious life long sabbatical from college football.  Alabama pays Nick Saban  $5.62 million per year. Ask any Miami Dolphin fan about Nick Saban's character, and his willingness to tell the truth when up against it. Nick's daughter appears to be a chip off the old feisty and publicity seeking Saban block.  The list of overpaid football coaches is now legion in America, where the costs of getting a higher education get further and further out of reach, and student debt is now the great source of debt in this country surpassing credit card and mortgage debt this past year.  The total debt of student loans is now over a trillion dollars in this country. No shock to see a stagnating wage world in America  with soaring tuition coasts and the lowest state and local spending on higher education in 25 years create this debt disaster for families.


Over a million young guys strap-it up and play football in high schools throughout America. Of that total only  66,000 get to play college football, and of those only about a third get a scholarship. All this, and those players battling it out on the Saturdays putting the butts in the stands don't get a dime as the actual talent of the game. 


You'll never hear the analysts and play-byplay announcers call for ending their meal ticket. And the conglomerate media networks will never do the right thing and take a step back to see what despicable social reality they have created, since their only right thing has to do  with making their top executives, major investors and top talent oodles of money. 


So, in a day or two a verdict will come down on Penn State, and Penn State alone. But, Penn State was not created in a vacuum. Penn State is just the reflecting glass of our current university culture that allows abuses of power like Sandusky's to permeate our society, and gives passes to major indiscretions and infractions to those who fill a stadium and get a television contract.   


I will never follow college football again. I have been a football fan for most of my life, and have no issue with the game itself. If the business of football wants a minor league system of club teams not affiliated with universities by all means go for it. Have the USC, Ohio State, Nebraska, Alabama, Florida, Miami, Oklahoma, Boise State minor league teams play their hearts out any day of the week they choose. We just need to remove this caricature of a game from places where higher education should be the sole focus. No other nation on earth uses their hallowed halls of academics as the venue for head-banging entertainment.  





    

Julius Comes Again

Julius Caesar's month arrives.




With apologies to Glen Frey, "the heat is on" throughout the days and nights. This time of year the Beach Boys always came to mind when I was younger. I was never a huge fan of the brothers and cousin from Hawthorne, CA and their many additions/subtractions over the years, but always thought many of their seminal hits catchy, and now find several other tunes of  Brian Wilson's evoking a sadness nostalgia wrings from an old sentimental brain when tweaked by a riff.  Surprising staying power for a band trapped in a regional location tied firmly to one decade, the 1960s.

It's not that the Beach Boys didn't make good music after the Sixties, but no one knows or remembers those songs much, if at all. Everyone remembers all the lyrical names of the California Girls from Help Me Rhonda and Wendy to Barbara Ann and an old lady from Pasadena, but after the Seventies crossed the big dial in the space time universe the band had a tough time selling records. Cameron Crowe found a nugget from the under appreciated album, Surf's Up, which Carl Wilson wrote with Jack Rieley titled Feel Flows. He included it on his rock nostalgia masterpiece film, Almost Famous.  The song is so unlike the usual Beach Boy offering in theme and instrumentation, but when you hear the harmonies you have a real good idea of who you're listening to while it takes you on a transcendental groove that was already out of time by its original release but has remained timeless due to its great production values with an exquisite layered mix of vocals and instrumentation .

Certainly, over my listening years a lot of artists (huge, obscure and everywhere in between) have mined the hot season with some great songs. Lovin' Spoonful's Summer In The City,  Sly Stone's Hot Fun In The Summertime, Alice Cooper's School's Out, Don Henley's  The Boys of Summer, Diesel's Sausalito Summer Nights, Janis Joplin's or Miles Davis' versions of Cole Porter's Summertime, Jimi Hendrix's Long Hot Summer Night, Meatloaf's Paradise By The Dashboard Lights with inspired baseball commentary by Phil Rizutto,  and Green Day's Wake Me When September Ends all pop into my skull as good sun-season melody fodder. I'm sure you have  some other tunes that come to mind that wring out beach towels of of memory-dripping summer madness.

Maybe this month's heat fried some of my circuitry, but I can't think of one British rock act circa 1960s onward that owns a good tune that really means summer. I know there have been plenty of tunes about sunshine from many a Brit band, or artist, but the feeling is that a day of sunshine is one of those rare and sparkling events to be celebrated as a gift, certainly not the American styled season of sweat. The Beatles could pop out Good Day Sunshine and Here Comes the Sun, but those certainly in no way evoke a summer spirit.  The Rolling Stones have a great tune, Winter, but no song of summer. The Kinks coined  the title, Autumn, but never for the season preceding it.  I guess it makes sense when the nation's latitude falls where Southern Canada's rests that odes to warm months would be sparse, much like summer itself in those climates. But, that curious Canadian, Bryan Adams, had a modest hit with The Summer of '69 back in the early 1980s. Of course, Bryan had his eye on the American market back in those days and summer has been  a somewhat topical treatment here in the states.

I say somewhat topical, because only two major rock era acts post the Beach Boy's 1960s moment in the pop sun truly make summer, and what the season really stands for in this country, their stock and trade.  Just my little opinion here on the blogosphere, but only Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger have owned summer in the rock world.  

When you listen to these two great artists, and especially their defining work from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, the themes and energy surrounding so many of their songs just screams high temperatures and perspiration born of  passionate desperation for youth on the cusp.


Bob Seger's best material exudes a sexual heat, a longing and an elusiveness of the all-too-brief moments of long days and short nights that quickly were over. His usual persona for many of his memorable songs always looks back in Night Moves, Roll Me Away, Main Street, Brave Strangers and Against the Wind. Other songs like Fire Down Below, Come to Poppa, Sunspot Baby and Her Strut all have beat and thermometer set to sauna levels. "Like a wildfire out of control" ... "young and restless running against the wind." Lines define the time.


Bruce Springsteen means summer in a completely different way for me, although he and Bob share the motorcycle as a metaphor on more than one occasion. The three major album releases- Born to Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River all deal with summer's promise and agony for youth looking to escape the inexorable determination of their forged fates. Years ago the sameness of some arrangements and beat on several of the Darkness on the Edge of Town's songs bothered me, but as time passed and gave my ears some distance I began to greatly appreciate the force of those slow hammer blows that marked these songs and the everyday intense repetitive drudgery causing the drive to escape they evoked. For Bruce, summer is/was no vacation time, nor a sexual metaphor in the great body of his work. Summer is the grind, it begets work-sweat and meets desperate encounters trying to outrun the inevitable. The earlier songs more defiant, but by The River a resignation has emerged in the author's voice. Later albums channel many of these themes with differing colors. The mixes get better while the July driven eloquence of his youth dims, as it must with age and vantage point, but Bruce Springsteen will always define summer's sound for me. 


As Prove it All Night goes into the seventh minute of a long ago live recording, and Wrecking Ball  awaits its third run the through all the tracks I can hear an M-80 explode nearby in the neighborhood. The dog now frets and pants, his anxiety at a very high level. The cats look about, in better shape than the dog, but they're old and probably don't hear as well. I turn up the music a bit, like I am forced to do every July 4th holiday to ease the critter nerves. Good speakers with summer melodies help.


Thanks for stopping by. 

What's Up? Doc.

I had a blog post almost set to go last week. I watched a number of terrific documentaries recently and thought I would pass my takes on each of them, in the spirit of providing knowledge about the crimes might undo the punishments being exacted on the innocents of the nation, which now swims daily in the conglomerate-owned vast seas of propaganda. No one gave me these films for free (those days are so gone) and no one chatted me up  looking for your eyes to capture as a click to some twisted algorithm tie that indicates if you like this plastic disc you must own this underwear. Fuck advertising.

But my blog post got derailed by events in real life, which somehow (even with my near invisible real life presence) takes precedence and routinely spoils my plans.  Ah, Robert Burns. This morning, as I pound the keyboard, finds me waiting on my Hot Coffee. Can't sip until the needle slips in to steal about four vials for some analysis. Have to get a shit sample off at some point today, too. Fun stuff.

Really, though, I can't complain much. My wonderful spouse did the heavy lifting by landing her current job this January, after 7 months on the unemployment dole. I won't get into her job- that is her business, but even though she was hired as "management" she and I had to wait four months for one benefit from the job to begin. All this just means we both got our health care coverage back after almost one year without it this June.

When I wrote that first sentence in the last paragraph maybe I should have typed, "We hit-it-out-of-the-park-fucking-lucky." Last Wednesday I thought I would give our circus dog, Darby, a well needed and deserved ride to one of his fun spots. The little dude likes the short drive, and short walk about the town to sprinkle his Darbiness on his favorite local flora. We hit the road and the trails at the local bluffs off Panorama Drive and had a great time. We got back and had a sandwich together, as we regularly do, and then I began to feel the effects of  having gotten up at 5AM along with the morning chores coupled with the outing followed by lunch, and all of a sudden it was nappy-poo time. And at about 1PM I went down.

Within an hour my chest felt like a pecan being squeezed in a nutcracker, with the back of my neck pouring out whatever liquid contents remained in my shell. Disorientation class arrived, and I was at my seat early. For over two hours I spent the time taking a couple of  baby aspirin tablets and doodling over the sink with some dishes to convince myself all was under control but the vise-grip around my chest up to my throat never let up. I tried sitting but no luck. I could not lay down the pain was too excruciating, and I worried that if I did get prone I might not be able to get back up.

Being the cheapskate I am a 911 call never entered my mind, nor did just calling the local ambulance service. I'd seen those rates from my many experiences with my dad several years ago. I knew the rates hadn't dropped with the housing prices. Shucks, the mayor of this berg who owns the local ambulance service and who basically has a monopoly here in the county, had just gone before the city council and county supervisors and they gave him everything he asked for in terms of service and rate increases for his ambulance business. I hung on until 4PM when I texted my wife if she could leave a little early, because I was not feeling too well.

I might have waited until she got home had I not experienced a very small event like this one about 3 weeks prior in the back yard after mowing the lawn. That episode was not nearly as intense, and one baby aspirin with a sit down alleviated the minor chest pain. I knew all this could just as easily be some GERD attack, but I had no acid reflex feeling in my throat nor any of the usual burping-the brains-out while syncopating farts in rhythm to the ultimate personal humiliation dance routine that accompanies gastritis and all its wonderful subsidiaries like H. pylori and the like. This was probably the heart attack I never worried about, and so I put in the text message with a follow up call which got her voice message prompt.

I could relax a little bit because the hospital and various doctors could not take everything we own, because Jumping-Jeebus in the Cosmic Rebus of Life I had fucking insurance once again. So relaxed as a fool can be we drove to the ER room at the local Kaiser where blood pressure was taken, an EKG produced and a thorough exam of my feeble state dictated a hospital stay with more tests would be in order. The doctor asked if he should call the ambulance service, and, of course, I told him no. We would drive once he confirmed that I had a room ready.

My stay lasted roughly 30 hours. The nursing staff did outstanding and professional work, as did all the various aids and workers who keep a hospital running. I even had the electronics maintenance guy pop in to make sure my television set was working properly. He didn't like walking by and seeing the tv off, so he checked to make sure all was well with his set. He probably thought I was from Mars when I said I didn't watch much television, and really all I wanted to do was sleep in between blood pressure exams and drawing blood for tests on various body parts. "Televisions are here to help you get well." Cool, but I kept the thing off for all but fifteen minutes until the end of my visit.

I saw two doctors. Each visit was brief, but to the points. The doctors were cordial, seemed to care about my well being, and gave me sound professional advice concerning what tests were going to be necessary during my time in the hospital. A CTscan and x-rays revealed no masses or tumors, and gave no indication for the pain. The EKG and blood pressure readings were negative, but a chemical stress test would be necessary to rule out a heart attack. I would get that during my final five hours in the building along with a ultrasound test. Every procedure required my signature, which basically said go ahead and do it,  I know I can't sue and me or my family can only go through an arbitration process should something go terribly wrong. The joys of "tort reform."

The entire stay felt like I was in a perpetual dream state of semi-consciousness. I would doze off in mid sentence talking to my wife, or to the nurse. I don't know if they were amused, resigned, pained or relieved. I was just "sick object" to be treated. Seemed like the perfect mindset from my vantage point, although female nurses and aides always seemed worried when the floppy gown was moving that some "surprise" might be forthcoming. I assured them on the several times this came up that I was no transgender, and had decent underwear all the same. It wasn't a great comeback, but even in my addled state you could feel the immediate relief. I got to wondering how many small ugly episodes of On The Way To Uranus, with all the obligatory slime induced special effects getting emitted,  these aids had to confront in the course of a working day. Then I fell back to sleep. It seemed to take forever to move from the bed to a wheel chair to a room for a scan or exam. I could not tell east from west, north from south and had no concept of time unless a nurse was doing a countdown on some injection.  And food was a no no, because you had to fast for your particular test.  

I could have stayed that Thursday night and checked out Friday morning. I know my wife was relieved to  have me get home that evening cleared of any real damage. I still felt woozy-weird, but, hey, I used to go work feeling that way plenty of times in my youth, and I was alert enough to know that the longer the hospital stay the higher the odds some micro bacterial pathogen gets into that little vein opening where the medicines go in, or the blood goes out, exacting a dread infection that could kill you.  I remembered the packed ER room at the hospital when I arrived, and thought maybe one of those souls downstairs might really need a room. As it turns out, I was the classic ER user- a newly insured churned individual who had been out of the health care market for awhile ( not the uninsured or the illegal immigrant who are both painted by the forces of evil to stir fear in the hearts of the ignorant).

Well, of course, all of the above thinking was just a few onion  rings on the meat of the matter. I did not want another hospital day put on the family tab. Week-long vacations to exotic places at 5-star hotels cost less than a two days in a typical US hospital. And all turned out for the best. I had some pains and a fitful Saturday night, but my Sunday evening was feeling almost back to normal, weak but getting stronger.

On Monday I met with my primary care physician who gave me the seal of Kaiser approval for decent health, but ordered the needle and vials and fecal smear the post started with. All could have been wonderful until on my way back home I get a call from one of my dearest friends that he, too, had been in the hospital over chest pains at the same time I had been. He allowed me to tell my tale, and then quickly described his few weeks of heart wrenching pain that resulted in the heart surgery, which placed several stents into the primary valves leading to his heart. The doctors have finished most of the work, but they still have one more stent to place next week.

Life will never be as it was. Life can be good, but the new reality finds the throttle now has a governor. Stupid cliches such as "A man has to know his limitations"  take on new darker tones as summer days shorten. I need another cup of hot coffee.

Thanks for stopping by and spending some time! 

The Race Is On

Wow! Long time without something new on this little blog outpost. I thought maybe a few posts a month this year would be the reality, but that was just the dream talking smoke in my ears.

Why no blog post?

For the past year I tried my hand as a freight agent. Logging (instead of blogging) lots of computer time checking on various logistics boards from freight companies trying to find good paying lanes that truck drivers would book with me. This gig entailed lots of phone time and quote generations on top of the heavy computer hours spent each day just finding and posting hauls. And when one I posted finally got booked that precious cargo meant I became the dispatch person making sure the driver was where he/she was supposed to be from the moment the load was booked to the minute the haul was delivered and the trailer emptied.  Lots of 4AM alarm noise to get going for East Coast traffic when you live on the Left Out Coast.

Freight agent meant  contract worker, a 1099 IRS form unit of America's working class. No vacation, no benefits and no affiliation with any company, although I could only book hauls for one freight carrier's "independent" business owner-operator drivers.  On May Day I said enough to 70 hour weeks earning well under the federal minimum wage. Logistics is big business in America, but like nearly all big business in this country most of those doing the work from booking, warehousing and hauling don't make much dough and have little or no benefits. The 1099 form I received from the business entity I worked through placed "fishing services" as the category for my work. Oh well.

So late spring sees me in a variety of ball caps and loose fitting clothes gardening the grounds. Well, gardening might be a generous term. Mowing edging, trimming, raking and watering to keep up with spring-spurring grasses, hedges, leaf sprouts and weeds means I'm a glorified weed whacker doing all I can to stave off the inevitable reclamation of the family domicile by nature. I won't claim the title of gardener. Forget planting and harvesting some fruit or something on this 3rd of an acre plot. Who has time for that shit when you also have the pool duties to keep the old cement-pond appropriately cleansed and swim worthy with pitted plaster and warm water the perfect algae growth compound? Although all this activity keeps a body in shape, the heat these past couple of weeks has sapped my motor of any kick by early afternoon.  And it is still spring here in the Southern San Joaquin, before the real broiler temperatures arrive later this month.

Sipping on a cool one after working up the sweat pores I ponder the tough work done by men and women out in the California fields shaking trees while gathering nuts and fruit, digging in the ground with vegetables and doing all the various tasks with irrigation and maintenance. The Byrds version of Woody Guthrie's Deportee plays in the background. Here's a wonderful version by Arlo Guthrie and Emmy Lou Harris, but the Byrds take is the true classic for me from the Ballad of Easy Rider album the group released in 1969.




I have to give the field hands and the small working farmer huge props for strength, courage  and willpower. Field work is very hard work, by any measure, and unlike the category that it usually falls under in the various government and private think-tank repositories of statistics (unskilled labor) a tremendous amount of skill is necessary to do this work, grow and get the food to market and survive in some of the hottest climate conditions on this planet.

I won't bore you with a bunch of stats but California agriculture generated $37.5 billion for 2010 crop and livestock revenues (most recent statistical year) once again leading the nation for agricultural output by a huge margin. Iowa was a distant second and Texas was numero tres with a little more than half the revenue California totaled. But, all this agriculture grandeur is small solace to the hundreds of thousands who work  here in California in the lowest paying and physically demanding industries in America. California also puts to work more than two and a half times the amount of field hands than does Iowa and Texas combined, and 90% come originally from Mexico.

Kris Kristofferson comes to Bakersfield tonight to play a concert to help the UFW. Cheers, old bright dude, for still caring and doing something good for people who deserve it.  

What too many people fail to realize is that when a nation continues to deny one class of workers rights, privileges and benefits it doesn't take too long for other less stigmatized/scapegoated workers to lose theirs. So we see workers in all sorts of occupations from freight (in my recent case) to major food service locations and food processing plants working desperate hours for terrible wages and no benefits with no protections against the big business ownership class. 

So the Prez comes out and says no more deportations for the youngsters whose parents brought them north to try and earn a dollar the really hard way. This announcement is pure politics trying to seal up votes from a Latino community the Tea Baggers want totally gone, and the liberals seem incapable of protecting.  But, as poorly as liberals and Democrats have performed they stand as beacons of light in comparison to what the Republican Party has done to all minority groups in this nation over this past decade. But, all this tension and rancor  over the poor Mexican immigrant might just be a lot of hot air today over a problem that no longer exists, if truly it ever did.

The recent immigration statistics from the government have come out for 2011 and Asians now account for a larger percentage of USA inbound opportunists than do Latinos by a 36% to 31% margin. The Pew Research Center just recently posted a fascinating report on this social shift. What surprised me most was that Asians are far more satisfied with things here in this country than the all other ethnic groups, and the cumulative citizenry as a whole. It also surprised me to see how generally satisfied all people are in this country with their lives. When all you watch, hear and read in the media is how angry everyone is, you have to ask one basic question. If 75% of all Americans are happy with their lives why so much hostility in the media and politics?

Back here in beautiful California, the state that feeds the world, the news for everyone that the Latino immigration numbers have fallen off a cliff this decade are not comforting to many of our farmers and food processors. The trade associations for big agriculture interests in California are busy meeting with the politicians they have heavily invested with over the years like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Dan Lundgren. Too bad for the  big agriculture folks that these two members of the House of Representatives are out there working to make it impossible for Latinos to migrate to this country by supporting profiling laws that have surfaced in Arizona and in some southern states. When an industry continues to seek out only the most desperate of people, who will work for a pittance of what their labor is worth, more stories like this one from the Sacramento Bee are bound to follow.

Asians will not be the new immigrant group to replace the Latino in the fields and dairies. Asians now earn more than any other ethnic group in America by a hefty margin. Asians are the most educated ethnic group in America. This is a group that works hard, smart and not for chump change. 

Where will the labor come, from and at what price going forward? It could be as big a problem as water in these parts, because unlike the rest of the country's agricultural fields which are dominated by very few crops that machinery can harvest fairly efficiently, California has a labor intensive array of a multitude of diverse crops to pick from.

All I know is that I'm generally satisfied with my beverage, and my surroundings and hope to blog a bit more going forward now that my 1099 contract workdays are through. Thanks for stopping by.

March Madness Reserved For Those in Central and Eastern Time Zones Only

Today finds the last gasps of winter, wheezing away under dying seasonal spasms of wind and clouds but packing no punch, upon the nation. Here in California it was no winter at all, just sunshine and blue skies (well hazy blue skies). It is a couple of days after college basketball fans found out the fate of their teams and into what NCAA tournament brackets they fell, or were left alone on the doorstep without a plate or ticket into the big party.

No surprise after a season of insults hurled at virtually all Western college basketball squads to see so few invited. The Pac-12 Conference owns the most NCAA championships for this tournament, and really has UCLA and John Wooden to thank for the honors. But, this year UCLA faltered, just like last year, and after a 3 year run of making it it to the Final Four we now see that the whole conference stinks according to all the experts.

The Washington Huskies, who won the regular season title this year with a 14-4 conference record did not even get invited to the NCAA basketball tournament. No writer in all the national media pages I have been reading these past two days was the least bit surprised. Most called the Pac-12 "terrible year" or " mediocre" or "legendarily bad" this season. Really?

Most of this "legendarily bad" mediocrity for the Pac-12 conference shows up when you look at the wins and losses versus ranked teams in other parts of the country. Washington lost to Marquette on a last second 3-point shot in Madison Square Garden, and then a few days later at the same New York showcase lost to Duke by 6 points. Marquette University is located in Milwaukee, WI a little under 900 miles from New York City, and Duke is located in Durham, NC approximately 480 miles from the Big Apple. The Seattle school traveled 2,900 miles to play in New York City to two of the top teams in the nation and lost by 8 points in two games.

The Arizona Wildcats traveled to Gainesville, FL and lost to the Florida Gators in overtime to the nation's 12th ranked team in the polls. Arizona beat New Mexico State handily when they played at New Mexico State. New Mexico State is in the NCAA tournament as a 13 seed and Arizona is just another "legendarily bad" Pac-12 team who couldn't get a sniff this year. The Wildcats did beat St. Johns in New York by a wide margin, and all St. Johns had to do was walk to Madison Square Garden for the game. It's 2,500 miles from Tucson, AZ to New York City.  

Stanford lost by 6 to Syracuse in New York after leading most of the way and were ahead by 6 points with with a little more than 4 minutes to play in the game. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said, "They outplayed us the whole game." Stanford had beaten Oklahoma State by 15 a couple of nights earlier in NYC. Distance from SFO to NYC is just under 3,000 miles.The Cardinal also beat North Carolina State in Palo Alto and Colorado State  by 12 at home. CSU is in the tourney as an 11 seed as is Noth Carolina State. Stanford is just another "legendarily bad" Pac-12 basketball squad.

Oregon had its season's hopes rubbed out with an opening away loss to Vanderbilt in Nashville and a 14 point defeat to BYU in Salt Lake City a month later. Anyone following college ball knows Vanderbilt just beat the top ranked team in the nation, Kentucky, this last weekend.  The loss that hurt the most, though, was the Virgina Cavaliers who traveled to Eugene and beat the Ducks who were playing at home. Finishing at 13-5 in their conference could not overcome those three losses.

As the Pac-12 regular season runner-up, the University of California, Berkeley landed a spot in the tourney as one of the at-large worst teams in the field. This means the Golden Bears must play a game against South Florida to qualify for the second round (really the first but who is quibbling) of games. The Cal-South Florida contest will be held in Nashville, which means the California team must travel 2,400 miles to meet the South Florida squad coming 700 miles from Tampa. The Bears lost to the three Top 25 teams they played this year (Missouri, UNLV and San Diego State).  All were away games.

Colorado got in to the NCAA field of 68 by winning the Pac-12 tournament, not by its record. It had 7 conference losses in the regular season and no major out-of-conference victories that mattered to the national pollsters at all. The Buffaloes get to play another Western Region team, UNLV, right off the bat, to make sure at least one western team will both lose and advance. Both teams do catch one break in that where they start play is not that far from their home campuses, 475 miles for Colorado to travel from Boulder, CO to Albuquerque, NM and 575 for UNLV to travel from Las Vegas, NV. Colorado thought for sure they were in last year, and the coach threw a big party on selection night only to see the University snubbed by the selection committee.  They already knew Colorado was headed to the Pac-12 and punished them right away.

In the spirit of trying to erase as soon as possible the western squads in this year's tournament who are not part of the "legendarily bad" conference, the masters of the NCAA selection committee and bracketologists handed out the Long Beach State 49ers-New Mexico Lobos opening match-up. Now although there is an opening NCAA round played in Albuquerque, NM, the folks at the NCAA sent both the New Mexico schools to Portland, OR for their games. That is 1,400 miles and a time zone away. The University of North Carolina and Duke University get to play in Greensboro, NC for their opening rounds.  Greensboro is about 50 miles from both Chapel Hill and Durham.

Then there is St. Mary's traveling to Omaha to face Purdue. California Bay Area team travels over 1,660 miles to face the Boilermakers who travel 550 miles to play. One squad has a two timezone change and the other has none. The school that travels least was a middle of the road Big-10 squad with 12 losses. St. Mary's went 27-5 in a conference that included Gonzaga and BYU who also got invites to the NCAA basketball tournament.

Gonzaga from Spokane, WA, which finished right behind St. Mary's in the West Coast Conference, gets to travel to Pittsburgh, PA hoist ball against West Virginia, a middle of the road team from the Big East that went 9-9 for their conference record. WVU, from Morgantown, WV, finished their regular season at 19-13 and travel less than 80 miles to essentially host the better seeded team Gonzaga, which must travel nearly 2,300 miles for the privilege to play the game. By the way, Gonzaga blasted Notre Dame by 20 points earlier this year, and Notre Dame finished third in the Big East. Some reward for the West Coast Conference runner up. When Gonzaga beats WVU they get to play Ohio State who had to travel all of 180 miles for their opening round games.

San Diego State, which was ranked in the top 25 most of the season came in second the Mountain West Conference behind the University of New Mexico Lobos and one game above UNLV. The Aztecs beat Cal by a point in San Diego early in the season and are 26-7. This team gets to travel to Columbus, OH to face a North Carolina State squad that lost to Stanford, and has a 21-12 record thus far. The Wolfpack got seeded number 11 and the Aztecs are a 6 seed. So why does the better team get forced to travel 2,300 miles to play while the lower seed only travels 480 miles?

I was surprised Nevada University from Reno, NV did not get invited, but the New Mexico State team they beat on and who finished second in the WAC got in. Maybe Reno is just too close to California and got punished by default.

It reminds me of that recent poll that was out about a month ago on how the nation viewed all the states. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/state-favorability-poll.html

No love for California these days and the NCAA seems to relish putting those on the west coast in their proper place.  In a desperate attempt to appease all the California haters, and have the Pac-12 Conference try to regain a measure of respectability, the conference big wigs announced that Las Vegas, NV will host the Pac-12 Conference basketball tournament for the next 3 years.

Just about says it all. No ball here.

Thanks for stopping by.