Frankrupt

From: frankrupt.com


There used to be an old joke about owning a baseball team: Q: How do you make a small fortune owning a baseball team? A: You start with a large fortune.

That may have been true in the '70s, but notsomuch nowadays. Baseball (and football and basketball) franchises are nearly impossible to lose money on since the '80s. Franchise values have soared, along with television rights fees. It's almost impossible to screw up a baseball franchise, especially one that is a blue-chip brand, like, say the Dodgers.

Enter Frank McCourt. McCourt and his wife Jamie bought the Dodgers from FOX, who had bought the team from the storied O'Malley family.

Owning the Dodgers should let an owner be able to print money, but the McCourts found a way to screw that up. The cracks in the foundation started when the couple divorced. The details are too long to get into, but between the McCourts using $100M of the team's money for personal expenditures, having their TV deal with FOX voided by MLB, and being stripped of the day-to-day operations of the club by commissioner Bud Selig have pushed McCourt to having the team file for bankruptcy. The Dodgers.

I didn't know anything about the McCourts prior to their acquiring the Dodgers; apparently, others did. However, it's clear that neither McCourt is fit to be a baseball owner.

And Mark Cuban can't join this club?!

Quadruple Threat

From: thelaughbutton.com

There's something impressive about artists/musicians that are multi-talented: the singer/songwriter, the actor/director, etc. I haven't seen the show "Louie" yet, but you have to give kudos to comedian Louis C.K. for all of his roles in creating that show.

Not only does Louis star in the show (loosely based on his own life), he also writes, directs and edits the show (!). All while taking care of his two daughters.

I saw a story once about the numerous athletes that want to be rock stars/rappers, and the numerous rappers/rock stars that want to be athletes, usually with unsuccessful results. Clearly, though, someone has found not one, two or three, but four things he is successful at. Impressive!

Redemption

From: sportydesktops.com

Just like the rest of America, I'm a sucker for redemption stories. It was great to see Rory McIlroy get over his performance at the Masters in record fashion, smashing the competition at this week's US Open.

There are too many students that give up on an assignment, a class or school altogether once they encounter some obstacles. It's a sad story, but repeated often. A situation that happens less often, but is even harder to understand, is where students start their high school careers on track, but then encounter a bump midway through that bumps them off-course. I had a student living that scenario this year--when I had her as a freshman, she seemed fine and was passing all of her classes. Two years later, she's crashing and burning through a repeat of tenth grade. Why?

After flaming out at the Masters, McIlroy could have easily slid into a tailspin, letting his negative experience cloud his future opportunities. Instead, he went out and dominated the next major event he went to. Can our students shake off bad experiences and have similar success. Why not?

Another Year Done

From: d118.org

After saying goodbye to the seniors, it's time to say goodbye to the rest of the 2010-2011 school year. Thoughts:

*This year was much more taxing than expected. I knew that the previous year would be back-breaking--I wasn't expecting this one to be like that. The primary culprit was piloting two new curricula, Sports & Entertainment Marketing I & II.

*Pilots are tough. I was asked last year to pilot the aforementioned curricula. I should have picked one course or the other to do, not both. Teaching two pilots made me feel like a first-year teacher all over again. The scrambling on a near-daily basis to get through the day.

*School Improvement Teams need a Truth-in-Advertising rule. It seems like many faculty members expect the SIT to wave a magic wand and make everything in the school perfect. Depending on the school and the principal, SIT can be all-powerful or all-toothless. Our SIT is more like the latter. I guess that's my fault since I was chair the last two years.

*The surplus formula is a mystery. Unfortunately, our school was cutting positions again. I know that some districts follow the last in-first out theory, and businesses like to lop off the top earners. But our school system always surprises me with who they let go. Some years, it's people with 25+ years of service; this year, it's anyone with 14-42 years. What a range!

For the summer: a time to relax. No classes to take, no classes to teach. After the last two years, I definitely need some downtime.

Check My Stats

From: bleacherreport.com

Go ahead, call me a hater: I don't care. I rooted for the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA Finals almost as hard as if my Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) were playing. If there was ever a white hat/black hat matchup, this was it. All of this hatred was inspired, of course, by LeBron James' "The Decision."

Leave it to LeBron to not get what went wrong. Granted, he had to deal with media pressure that no normal NBA player should have to deal with, but he did ask for. He finally snapped:

"Absolutely not, because at the end of the day, all the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today," James said. "They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that."

I love Czabe's take on LeBron's reaction!

The More Things Change...

I had watched the video when it first aired back in December, but ESPN's "Pony Excess," part of the 30 for 30 series, was especially timely in light of what has happened with Ohio State.

SMU has set the standard for getting caught cheating, and was deservedly punished for it. At the end of the video, several people make the comment that if the NCAA had known how program-destroying the "death penalty" is, they never would have applied it to SMU. I have to take the other side--if the NCAA sentences another program to the death penalty, other schools would shape up (hopefully).

I read a good quote about college football on Twitter today: "It's not the players, it's the men in the suits." Exactly. Hey, big-money boosters, why don't you write those checks to the athletic department instead of giving cash to the players?!

Goodbye, 2011

From: dailyclipart.net

It was a pleasure to see all of our graduates on the field yesterday. Thoughts:

*What's the lowest your GPA can be to qualify for a diploma? I saw one of my students on the field who, at last count, had a 0.9 GPA (and he skipped my exam). Shouldn't you at least have a 2.0 to walk across the stage?

*Every year, there's that group of students that are close to passing a class necessary to graduate, but they don't pass. Some administrator says "Do you want [student name] back here next year?" and they get to walk. What if we pressed the issue and made these students pass the class legitimately? Can't they take summer school or something?

Our local paper published an article on all of the graduation ceremonies that took place at our coliseum--ours is on our football field. The money quote is at the end by a local high-schooler, who's most memorable high school moment is a food fight in the cafeteria. Telling.

The Role of Parents

In a word, wow! Amidst all of the chattering over school reform, a lone voice questions the role of parents in all of this. Before I started teaching, I believed that schools were only as good as parents demanded them to be. Nothing I've seen in the last five years has changed that belief.

Parents, the ball's in your court!

Dirk & My Students

After watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals (an 86-83 Mavericks win), I thought about how Dirk Nowitzki, star of the Mavericks, compared to my students. Nowitzki came to play with a 102 degree fever, after skipping the morning shootaround in order to rest up prior to the game. Although he had a off-night shooting, he scored 10 of his 21 points in the 4th quarter, including the game-sealing layup. Clutch.

The students in my class who were points away from passing for the quarter and skipped out from doing their final project presentations, a major part of their grade--not clutch.

Heaven on Earth?

From: nsrecreation.wordpress.com


It's amazing the things you'll run across while reading Twitter! I was scrolling through my timeline over the weekend and saw a tweet from someone about playing a softball game at a sports management high school in Brooklyn.

Intrigued, I did a search and found that, yes, there actually is an institution called the Brooklyn High School of Sports Management. One of my assistant principals noted that the school is probably a charter, but oh well.

Our AD said to me once (jokingly, I think) that our school should be a sports marketing magnet school. Maybe it can be done. Hmm....

Seeing Red

From: wikipedia.org

It's testing season, and a lot of people (students, teachers, parents, administrators, etc.) have lots of gripes about it. Other than wishing we could test two subjects per day, I'm not too upset about them, although blocking out four hours for a student to take a test is beyond ridiculous--no student should ever need to take an exam that lasts four hours, especially at the high school level.

Oh, and I guess I have one gripe after all: exemptions. When I was in school, you had to make an A for all four quarters in order to be exempt from an exam. My county, however, has lowered the bar so much that almost any senior can be exempt from an exam. A C in a class? No problem--you didn't miss any days this quarter! Really?!

I wouldn't have a problem with exemptions if they didn't affect my classes so much. Because students can't exempt from CTE tests, they will refuse to sign up for them, all because they don't want to come in for one to take a test.

So it makes me extremely angry when I have a senior who has exempted out of every exam (except mine)bubble the answers to the first 60 questions before ever opening the booklet. And he's an honor graduate. I e-mailed his mother to complain...not that it makes a difference at this point.

Memo to Seniors

This