The Not-So-Pro Bowl January 29, 2010
Posted by Chris in Everything Else, Faith.add a comment
Thursday night’s all right for blogging…
The week before the Super Bowl is upon us. You know what that means; get ready for inane player interviews, over-hyped predictions, and the Pro Bowl.
The Pro Bowl?
In a stunning display of nonsense, the National Football League has moved the Pro Bowl from its previous post-championship schedule to the off week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. But there’s a slight problem. No one wants to play.
The best players in the league, presumably the AFC champion Indianapolis Colts and the NFC champion New Orleans Saints, can’t play. They have a little game next week to decide the world championship of professional football. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be there. The league mandates those Pro Bowlers interrupt their Super Bowl preparations to attend the game, doubtless as disinterested bystanders. Colts president Bill Polian called the new rule “stupid.”
The conference champions aren’t the only ones not playing. Many of the league’s stars, having participated in playoff games over the last two weeks, begged out of this week’s contest. Others, citing injury, surgery, and/or apathy, will be skipping the league’s ill-fated all-star game as well. So far, at least thirty-one Pro Bowlers won’t play.
The end result of this mass exodus? Mediocrity.
Don’t believe me? Consider the quarterbacks who aren’t playing: Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Phillip Rivers, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and a certain fellow by the name of Brett Favre. Heck, even Pro Bowl alternate Carson Palmer bailed on them. Of the six signal-callers originally selected to play, only one—Aaron Rogers of the Green Bay Packers—will actually participate. Which means viewers will be treated to the likes of David Garrard and Vince Young, the leagues 17th and 18th rated passers respectively. What, JaMarcus Russell was busy?
But perhaps the dumbest Pro Bowl development yet is the claim by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that the Pro Bowl is already a “success,” by virtue of the increased attention it has received thus far. That’s like saying a church is a success by virtue of the headlines it made when the pastor ran off with the church secretary.
Speaking of the church, what organization—other than the NFL—has the audacity to produce a mediocre product and yet somehow expect it to attract a big audience? Too many churches regularly offer mediocrity: lifeless music, lackluster programming, and boring worship. Far too many pastors regularly offer pedestrian sermons, hastily thrown together on Saturday night due to overwork, misplaced priorities, or just plain laziness. And yet the church seems surprised when the ratings are down.
We expect quite a bit of the Holy Spirit when we choose to offer people mediocrity and then sit back and cross our fingers, hoping the Spirit will bail us out once more. Such an approach smacks of cheap grace. Striving for excellence is undoubtedly more costly, both in terms of cash and commitment. But costly grace is always more faithful.
The ratings for this year’s Pro Bowl are likely to be dismal. Viewers know better, and they are not inspired by Sunday afternoon mediocrity. I think they feel the same about Sunday morning.
See you back here next Thursday!
Going Gently into that Late Night January 22, 2010
Posted by Chris in Everything Else, Faith.1 comment so far
Thursday night’s all right for blogging…
The hours are winding down for my boy Conan. Today it was announced that a formal agreement has been reached between Conan O’Brien and the National Broadcasting Company on Conan’s departure from The Tonight Show. I will be sad to see him go. I still miss Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno’s brand of middle-of-the-road humor never really resonated with me.
The bottom line, of course, is ratings. Conan simply didn’t get them. Not yet, anyway. What Conan has had, of late, is lots of support. A generation of angry young viewers has taken to the internet, amassing hundreds of thousands of Facebook supporters and filling cyberspace with testy tweets. Of course, I’m sure Leno has his supporters, too. It’s just that messages sent by telegraph take longer to register than those sent by Twitter.
All kidding aside, I was proud of NBC when they made the move. They still had a viable product in Jay Leno. Viable, but dated; the demographics seemed to suggest that his audience, while still substantial, was aging. So NBC made a bold, visionary move for the future. But then they lost their nerve.
Seven months of subpar ratings were too much for the Peacock network to endure. NBC decided to give up on their noble experiment and return to the mediocrity of the affable but decidedly safe Leno. Leno represents security. For a network that is struggling mightily, he is the sanctuary of the mundane. He represents safety. And safety has a unique appeal, especially when faced with the fearsome specter of change.
Change takes guts. Change takes vision. And perhaps most of all, change takes patience.
The Tonight Show was on top—and Leno was the undisputed King of Late Night—when NBC made the change. Bold. They gave it seven months. Not so bold.
Seven months was almost enough time for Lane Kiffen to wreck Tennessee football, but it’s probably not enough time to determine whether or not Conan could actually make a go of Tonight. Nevertheless, the suits at NBC pulled the plug and switched back. So much for courage. But when you’re on top, who needs courage?
Our Protestant mainline churches used to be on top, too. We were the undisputed Kings of Sunday Morning. Sure, there were indications that the demographics were changing. There were transformations in culture and society going on all around us. But that didn’t matter. Too many of our denominations chose “not so bold.” Cue the decline sign for our studio audience.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if our mainline Protestant denominations, when they were at the top of their game, had decided to risk everything and invest for the future instead of choosing the safety of the familiar. Would we still be in the decline we are in today or would we be on the brink of seeing the bold yet risky investment we made years before pay off?
Now many of our churches find themselves faced with the distinctly more difficult task of changing when they are no longer on top. Declining attendance and dwindling budgets make change harder. But for many churches, it’s no longer a matter of choice. It’s a matter of survival.
Will Christ’s church survive? Yes. But it won’t be easy. It will require our best efforts and our strong commitment. And it will require more than seven months. Faithful, long-term vision is essential for the vitality of the church.
Conan, too, will survive. And as for Leno, he probably still has some life in him. But I can’t help wondering if he’ll regret not having walked away at the top of his game. There are, after all, lots of Muhammad Alis, but very few John Elways.
See you back here next Thursday night.
The World’s Worst Blogger June 2, 2009
Posted by Chris in Everything Else.2 comments
Is anyone still listening? I come online this afternoon to freely admit that I’m not a particularly good blogger. Or perhaps more specifically, I’m not all that faithful to the task of blogging. I have been on blog hiatus for several months now. Maybe a word of explanation will help.
I took Lent off from blogging. My reasoning was simple; Lent was (and is), at least for me, more about discovering who God is and less about discovering who I am. So here I am, trying to observe a holy Lent, and yet filling copious amounts of cyberspace with rantings about what I think, what I believe, and what I find to be blogworthy. These two things suddenly seemed completely incongruous with one another.
A couple of days later, an incident with the computer reinforced my hiatus-think. I installed this new antivirus program on my computer at home. Unknown to me, it created a new folder in my e-mail: the “spam” folder. I discovered it by accident one day, several weeks into the season of Lent. As I looked at the folder, I realized that for several weeks it had been filtering out all kinds of ridiculous messages about Nigerian fortunes left to me and male enlargement and fake Rolex watches and other assorted nonsense. By filtering out all these inane distractions, it had actually been helping me to do what I had wanted to do in the first place; observe a holy Lent, by focusing more on God and less on me.
So I took the season off from blogging. And I gave serious consideration as to whether blogging is really of all that much value.
Here’s where I ended up; blogging can be of great value, if done properly. So what’s a proper blog? My personal opinion: blogs that are selfishly about the blogger and not much else are more often than not a waste of time, energy, and whatever little bytes they occupy in cyberspace. If I’m going to blog, then there really needs to be more to it than simply “I’ve got some particular axe to grind.” Blogs that share an opinion on the events of the day, blogs that tell someone’s story or update friends about a new house or a new job, blogs that post pictures of kids as they grow up; all these things are wonderful uses of the technology. But any blog that is solely about me, while being devoid of any usefulness for the reader, is not likely to appear here. My hope is that as I blog, the things discussed will mean something to you as well. I favor blog as dialogue, rather than blog as monologue.
Others may have quite different opinions regarding the proper use of blogging and as always, YMMV. But as I return to the blogosphere, I hope that what I write—no matter how trivial or mundane it may appear—might actually give you cause to think, as opposed to simply inundating you with what I think.
Steroids and Apologies February 10, 2009
Posted by Chris in Baseball, Everything Else.2 comments
The news that Alex Rodriguez used steroids while with the Texas Rangers didn’t exactly shock me. It disappointed me. But shocking? Not really. In this now infamous “steroid era,” it almost seems more shocking to hear of a big league ballplayer who put up big numbers and didn’t use steroids.
What is shocking to me is the news that Tom Hicks, the owner of the Texas Rangers, wants an apology from A-Rod. The Dallas Morning News reports that Hicks claims to feel “personally betrayed” by Rodriguez. On A-Rod’s apology to Texas fans, Hicks waxes, “I’d rather have one further apology to the owner of the Texas Rangers who signed him to that contract. Then I’ll decide if I accept that apology.”
I place this in the category of unmitigated gall. Hicks seems to suggest that he was running a church camp until A-Roid came along. The facts do not support such a position. Does anyone remember Rafael Palmeiro and his famous finger-wagging denial? A partial list of other Texas Rangers who have fallen under the cloud of steroids (on Hicks’ watch) includes such luminaries as Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Gary Matthews, Jr, Ken Caminiti, Randy Velarde, Chad Allen, Sammy Sosa, et al. This doesn’t even include the would-be linchpin of modern MLB steroid use, Jose Canseco.
Hicks certainly has every right to be upset with Rodriguez’s lies. But does Tom Hicks really expect me to believe that as the owner of the team, he had absolutely NO idea what went on in his own clubhouse, apparently in large numbers? It now seems entirely possible that at least half of the 2002 Rangers lineup (that led baseball with 230 homeruns that season) may have been juiced.
Obviously, no one should expect Tom Hicks to personally go through every players’ locker. But as the CEO of the organization, doesn’t he have a responsibility to put into place a system of management and oversight that would prevent such widespread illicit activity? And doesn’t the ultimate responsibility for the failure of that system belong to Hicks himself? Yet he wants an apology from A-Rod.
What’s next for Hicks? Will he demand an apology from Chan Ho Park for all those balls hit off Park that have yet to land? Will he demand an apology from the Yankees for fleecing him in the A-Rod trade? Will he demand an apology from me for not buying enough five-dollar Lemon Chills?
This is about more than baseball. It is about corporate irresponsibility. Tom Hicks didn’t break any laws or violate any fiduciary responsibilities; it is, after all, his own money. But lack of CEO accountability is at least part of the stuff of which excessive Wall Street bonuses are made. More egregious examples of such behavior get you a cell next to Jeff Skilling.
I don’t blame Hicks for being mad. But now that it appears his organization had more syringes than strikeouts in 2002, I am wondering when Hicks will apologize to me. Be it ignorance, indifference, arrogance, naiveté, or something more sinister, Hicks’ handling of steroids in Arlington is yet another case in mismanagement. Which may explain why the Texas Rangers are one of only three MLB teams never to have appeared in the World Series. I await a lavish apology. Or at least a free Lemon Chill.
The Bane of Satellite Radio January 20, 2009
Posted by Chris in Everything Else.1 comment so far
Satellite radio is cool. I like the idea of being able to listen to the same station while driving my car from New York to Los Angeles, even though I rarely drive my car outside of Texas. Plus, I can listen to baseball games from every market. Scoreboard! There is a huge variety of programming on satellite radio; just about very genre of music is available. That sounds good, but there is a darker side. For the last twenty-four hours, I’ve had Barry Manilow’s “Somewhere in the Night” stuck in my head. I should probably be more careful about that 70′s channel. What’s the most embarrassing song you’ve had stuck in your head lately?
The Perfect Haircut January 14, 2009
Posted by Chris in Everything Else.5 comments
I have been searching a long time for the perfect haircut. It must strike that delicate balance of (1) not taking too long and (2) not looking ridiculous. Now given my head, any haircut can only look so good. Of course, I don’t want a Bozo, a Costanza, or a Mr. T. cut either. Yet despite my desire for a respectable-looking melon, I have tended toward speed. That is, I have been willing to trade quality for time; I have settled for mediocre haircuts as long as they didn’t take too long. I think I am getting closer to perfection though (a Wesleyan ideal not generally associated with haircuts). I have found a place that cuts my hair fast and does a pretty good job. They keep my haircut information (length, sideburns, clippers or scissors, etc.) in their computer so all I have to do is tell them my phone number and sit in their chair. They are even open late (I usually go around 8:45 p.m., to beat the crowd). I was rather pleased with my haircut experience of a couple of evenings ago. But as I was leaving, my brief post-haircut joy was suddenly cut short by the emergence of a terrible irony; even though I have been willing to suffer mediocre haircuts as long as they didn’t take too long, when others display that same attitude toward worship I am somewhat annoyed. Mea culpa.
