Word of the Day
Diaphonous (adj., DIE-ah-FUN-us)
Delicate and light, to the point of being so fine that light can pass through.
Gif of the Day
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Link of the Day
The Mid-Majority - Grace, Too
There's a lot we could say about The Mid-Majority, but we'll try to be brief. The Mid-Majority covered the mid-major and low-major college basketball programs—the ones you won't hear about on TV—focusing as much on the people trying to grind out victories on a daily, human scale—the kind of story you won't see on TV—and the personal experience of joy, sadness, and sensory thrill from going to a game—the kind that a TV experience can't replicate. It anticipated the pay-for-good-writing model that the industry is moving towards by ten years, staying afloat on a shoestring viewer-supported budget but managing to attend 100 games every season. And it churned out thoughtful pieces that connected sports to the bigger universe (what's that?), especially in its season-opening essay season each November. This is Grace, Too, the culmination of the beautiful Season 7 essay season:
"Our meeting with Coach Bennett had less to do with X's and O's and more to do with philosophy," Larranaga wrote in a column, which appeared on the opinion-editorial page of the Washington Post in March 2010. "Not just basketball philosophy, but a philosophy about life and a coach's responsibility to his players. Coach Bennett shared with us his philosophy of 'humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness.'"
Five simple words, a small enough collection to fit on a napkin, post-it note, or bumper sticker. Behind each was a fully-fledged value. Humility: The sober acceptance of one's own strengths and weaknesses, the knowledge of the self as both a special entity and a small thing in a big universe -- finite against the infinite. It was the strangest and most out of place of the five, especially in a sports world manufactured by ESPN, full of basketball players stuffing stat sheets, giving themselves nicknames and dreaming of SportsCenter highlights.
Passion: An eager and sustained drive to compete and excel, despite the day-to-day fluctuations of mood. A single word made flesh. Unity: The idea that a whole is greater than the sum of parts, that team interests and goals supersede one's own individual desires. Servanthood: The dutiful responsibility to give of oneself without want or need for reward, the concept of leading others by sacrificing for them. Thankfulness: Graceful gratitude for every experience, each high win, low loss and hard practice. The pleasure of realizing that each occurrence is a teaching opportunity, a lesson that can be applied to a future challenge.
"After the meeting, Coach Collier went back to Indianapolis and built his program into a winner," Larranaga wrote. "He won so often that other schools started calling him and asking him to take over their programs."
Five words, that's all. One for each finger. But there are differences between platitudes and principles -- or rather, Principles -- between success posters and success, between winning and talking about it. One can repeat words like "passion" and "unity" so often that they stop meaning anything anymore, for anyone. Anybody can be a philosopher, any coach can write words on a whiteboard and act the professor. Turning words into flesh is alchemy of the highest order; water into gold is a cinch in comparison.
But the following is true, and you can look it up: each of the three men in that room, on that day, later led a team to the NCAA Final Four.
Go read the whole thing (and the rest of S7 essay season too).
The Mid-MajorityKyle WhellistonThe Butler WayJoy in the mundaneBest of the internetEven the losers get lucky sometimes?