Who dey (Buckeyes)!

As a lifelong Bengals fan I cannot put into words how happy I am right now to say this:

The Bengals are going to the Superbowl!

And while I am digesting what happened and my throat is recovering from screaming I decided to focus on one aspect of the game that I loved: the role of Buckeyes in getting the victory.

And not just any particular class of Buckeyes, we’re talking the 2015 National Championship Buckeyes.

I’m not going to focus on the NFL Defense or Offensive Players of the Year who played on that team. The legendary wide receivers. No, instead I’m going to focus on 4 players who play for Cincinnati and all made key plays in the victory today.

Let’s start with the first half. Chiefs are up 21-10 and in a position to score again before the second half when they would receive the ball.

Mahomes throws the pass to Tyreek Hill who gets tackled short and in bounds. As a result, time expired and the chiefs were unable to score. Tackle made by Eli Apple, a former Buckeye from the 2015 team.

4th quarter. The Bengals have taken the lead. Chiefs have the ball in the red zone with less than 30 seconds left. It’s third down. A field goal ties it but they’re looking to score. In comes Sam Hubbard (2015 Buckeye) for a huge strip sack (which the chiefs unfortunately recovered). This sack forces the chiefs to settle for a tying field goal.

And so the game is in overtime. The Chiefs get the ball first and per the NFL rules and most peoples expectations, this means the Chiefs will probably win. On the third pass of the OT opening drive Mahomes is intercepted by 2015 Buckeye Von Bell.

But none of these plays end up making a difference if the Bengals don’t have #9, Mr. Iceman himself under center. That’s right, in 2015, Joe Burrow was a Freshman at THE Ohio State University. Stuck behind some players named JT Barrett, Braxton Miller (who was now a WR), Dwayne Haskins and Cardale Jones.

And well, it worked out okay for him. And the Bengals are headed to the Superbowl.

Is there a better College Football team in history that can compete with the 2015 OSU Buckeyes?

Oh, and WHO DEY!

The Angel of Death

I was listening to mewithoutYou’s album, It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright! and was reminded, once again, that mewithoutYou is a great band. Not only are they a great band, but they fill their songs with more direct references (and straight up quotations) from the Bible than pretty much any other band I know.

For example: “The Angel of Death Came to David’s Room.”

This song portrays a conversation between King David and the Angel of Death when it visits David in his old age. David doesn’t want to go with him and the Angel keeps pointing out that death is inevitable. David references some of the parts of his life in his defeat of Goliath and his son Solomon, but none of that matters to the Angel. Finally the angel sings to David:

Come now David where’s Uriah gone?
Stranded on the battlefield, the troops withdrawn
Come now David, where’s Uriah gone?
His time came to go

Come now David, where’s Bathsheba gone?
And where’ve your binoculars and rooftops gone?
And the unexpected Baby-from-the-bath-night gone?
Their time came to go

Come now David, where is everybody goin’? [x7]

In the face of the inevitability of death, what we have done (right or wrong) really does not matter.

So are you ready to face death?

Tips for Reading

Over the years, people have asked me how I manage to read so much every year given 2 jobs, 5 kids and a partridge in a pear tree?

The answer is a focused strategy.

I start first by setting a goal. Not in terms of how many books to read, but what types of books. That is, what do I want to learn?

Next I come up with a structured reading list by researching topics and reading reviews. This makes it so that as I read, I already have the next one lined up and there isn’t down time between books.

I then divide and conquer. Every year I try to read a book of poetry. Usually, one to two poems a day will see that goal finished by years end.

Every year I try to read some sort of Bible commentary. I treat it as a devotional book and read 1-2 pages a day during my devo time. Usually, I can read 2 of those a year. This past year, Stott’s commentary on Romans took most of a year at that pace.

If I am reading something that requires thought, I read between 3-5 pages every day. No less than 3 pages is a must. Every now and then, I’ll have to up it. When I was reading the history of the third reich, I had to read about 20 pages a day.

That brings me to another strategy I use: I turn the TV and my phone off. I try to have my phone off for 1 hour of every day (2 hours this year). I also try to have at least 3 nights a week when I do not watch TV. I don’t just read during that time but it also increases the amount of time spent reading.

And throughout all of this, I read fiction. Sometimes the books I’m reading aren’t fun. While I enjoy learning, it isn’t always something I look forward to. And so I always have a good book of fiction nearby.

From the above, you can see that commitment turns out to be at least 5 pages of reading every day. That’s nearly 2,000 pages in a year–or a lot of books!

The end of everything

Well, 2022 is certainly off to a bang. I’m not fluent in Revelation so I can’t claim to be an authority figure on the signs of the apocalypse. But surely, this must be it:

Larry David, the brilliant comedic who was first portrayed by Jason Alexander as the character George Costanza. Then, after 9 successful season on Seinfeld, he came out of the closet, if you will, and made a semi-fictional show about himself where he is honest about his complete and total self-centeredness…is suddenly lecturing America.

And he’s right.

In the above clip, Larry takes a Klansman’s robe (yes, you read that correctly) to his cleaner who happens to be (like Larry), Jewish. His cleaner refuses and says he doesn’t want anything to do with them. Larry points out that when he acts like that, the cleaner is being no different than the Klansman. Let’s not be like them Larry says. Let’s turn the other cheek.

The end of the world?