"parole tide"?
(is this alabama football?)


roy upchurch
jeremy elder
rashad johnson
prince hall
glen coffee
antoine caldwell

it's probably unfair to lump all of these names together, but they are linked by the fact that they play (or played in the case of elder) football at the university of alabama. they are also linked by the unfortunate fact that they have all had some sort of off-the-field "issue" that became headline news around the state or around the country. these issues range from not adhering to a university textbook policy to getting arrested late at night in or around a bar to "breaking team rules" to first degree robbery (the latter is referring to elder, of course, and he has been dismissed from the team.). because of the sheer number of incidents, talking heads around town are clenching their teeth and just short of saying that saban has "lost control". i've heard he needs to "make an example" out of one of the players so that, in the future, other players will see that there are considerable consequences for putting oneself above the team. and, honestly, i get that.

i am a big fan of doing things "the right way". case in point, this past sunday, some friends and i played our first flag football game of the season. we had nine of our own guys show up sporting the birminghamandcheese gold and black, and we were ready to play. because we are either old or not fast or too new at the game to be considered anything other than recreational, we entered our team into the lowest level the league offers (i played in this same league last spring, mind you, and it's far from crappy.). the team that we were supposed to play sunday showed up short-handed and ended up picking up three "a"-league guys to fill out their roster. now, at the time, i couldn't have cared less. i just wanted to play. i wouldn't have cared if the team picked up randy moss and michael vick. i was ready to go. afterwards, though, losing to them felt a little dirty. all of their big plays were made by their pick-ups, and, in some ways, we felt like something was amiss. did we regret playing? absolutely not. but did we wonder if the result might have been a little different if their "real" team was there. yeah, kinda.

then again, these things happen to us all the time. in softball and basketball and now flag football, we know exactly who we will show up with every time we set out. a group of friends and co-workers that are kind of athletic, kind of not, but all of us wanting to compete and have a good time and extend the shelf-life of our athletic "careers". we don't pick up hoops ringers. we would rather play with three outfielders than pick up some random guy that may be good but we don't know. and we don't ask if you've played high school or college football before we extend an invite to play flag with us. we play first and ask questions later.

and keeping the last two paragraphs in mind, i can completely understand why outsiders and auburn fans alike would look at the discipline problems that have popped up since saban arrived and waive their collective fingers at alabama and wish the stiffest penalties upon the players involved so that, hopefully, it will affect the team the "parole tide" puts on the field in a negative way. absolutely, i can. but at the same time, i am reminded of how little i care about the repercussions and of how hopeful i am that saban give them all second and third chances so that they can be ready to go come the clemson game.

do i want my teams, the teams that i play on, to do things "the right way" and always abide by the rules? yep. always have. always will. if nothing else, if gives us a wonderful excuse (and makes us feel better) when other teams do not and we happen to lose to them.

do i want alabama's football team to do things "the right way"? um. maybe. sometimes. well...

ok, not really. it's not that i hope they don't. it's just that i hope they win football games more. and not having prince hall available would kind of hurt, you know?

so, stay out of trouble, guys. but if trouble happens to find you, here's hoping saban understands how "good of a person" you are and still lets you play saturday.

when things go your way


what does it say that the best thing that has happened to the dog whisperers in the last year happened on a friday morning almost three full weeks removed from the end of the actual football season? well, it means they have a better chance at being on the winning end of a coin-flip battle than they have at winning a real-life football game. kinda sad. but win a coin-flip they did yesterday and, thus, set the stage for the renewed hope that comes with every nfl draft and the fresh season that will then only be four months or so away.

as a falcons fairweather fan, it's been hard to follow a team that is waaaaay more of a story on msnbc and cnn than they are on espn. crazy how the face of your team killing dogs can do that. but with most of that behind them (along with the completely ridiculous cherry on top of their coach leaving for arkansas), things seem more quiet in the "dirty" than they have in a long, long time. no one knows anything about their coach (probably a good thing). they have one overrated cornerback, one blossoming uab blazer and maybe a couple other guys on their team that anyone outside of the team manager would recognize. they are the definition of a team that is ready to rebuild. to refocus. a team that needs a new face.

in my mind, there is only one choice. and his name is mcfadden. it made me incredibly upset watching sportscenter yesterday and hearing their draft expert tell me that they would probably go with dorsey from lsu or jake long from michigan at the three. or if he is there, they would pick a new "franchise" quarterback in matt ryan. matt ryan!!! the same matt ryan that played at boston college for 11 years and only as an 11th year supersenior did he make a name for himself??? that matt ryan? the falcons had matt ryan last year. his name was joey harrington. does anyone remember this? of course you don't. because, you don't care about the falcons. and, quite frankly, neither do i. at least, not a ton. but i would if they picked mcfadden. and isn't that all that matters? do you want to make a football choice or a financial choice, owner arthur blank? do you want to make a coach choice or a fan choice? do you want to build for the "future" or sell jerseys and tickets now? do you want me (and people like) me to drive from birmingham to atlanta to see a potential superstar in person or not watch an all-american tackle on television at home. to me, it seems so easy. to me, the choice is clear.

then again, to me, mike vick has learned his lesson, should be given credit for time served, be released and allowed to play for the falcons this upcoming season. i am a (fairweather) fan. i am not capable of making rational decisions about the teams i want to win.

so, go ahead. pick the tackle (offensive or defensive). build for the future. i'll be watching the colts.

tortured

this is the kind of image (can you tell i am on a little getty images kick?) that i remember when i think of kurt cobain. staring off into space. in my head, what he is thinking is that i want to be anywhere but here. anywhere other than in front of an audience that has paid to see me. out of sight of this camera off stage that is waiting patiently to capture a moment in my life that someone (like me) will use to define me. i don't want to be here, because i wasn't prepared for my life to be an open book. for my music that i love to be thrust into a machine that calls for my band to be in certain places at certain times to write certain hooks to make certain money. i wasn't prepared for this. i am not prepared for this. i don't want to prepare for this.

that's only in my head, of course. i wish it wasn't that way. i wish that what i remember from the one time that i saw nirvana play live was a frontman that was killing it onstage, having the time of his life and rip-roaring through his band's catalog like it might be his last chance to perform those songs ever. but that wasn't the case. don't get me wrong. the concert, the smoky, pot-ty concert was real and loud and amazing just like i wanted it to be, but it wasn't because of kurt cobain as much as it was i was at a fucking nirvana concert. for all i know, they could have been pumping nevermind through the pa system and had stagehands dressed up as the band. i wasn't close enough to know for sure. but that didn't really matter. what mattered was the experience. what mattered was that i was there. and that i would be able to tell my friends the next day what a second-hand high at a nirvana concert felt like. i wish i could remember what year, exactly, that was. i know it was at boutwell auditorium. i know where "there" was, just not when. not that it makes any difference. remembering life-defining experiences doesn't usually hinge on details. details would just get in the way of a good story that i probably changed each of the hundred times i told it.

as life-defining experiences go, this one, this concert seems fairly minimal as compared to the births of my girls, my wedding day, certain moments during my life as a church staffer, working in huffman and conversations that i've had over ribs or at o'charley's in roebuck or in the pool at gulf shores plantation. shoot, as concerts go, i think i had a more kick-ass (and definitely more of a second-hand high) time in the second circle of hell that was some warehouse in atlanta where i saw limp bizkit. but the nirvana one stands out above the others because of what happened a couple years later. when cobain killed himself. and the tortured part of his story, the romantic and cool part, became tragic. hearing the news of his death was what burned the above image, or something like that, into my brain. all the questions about what he was thinking about while he was staring off into space would now go unanswered and i'd be left to fill in my own blanks. it's kind of like if lost were to never air another new episode. all the loose ends would depend on my tying them up in my own imagination. i wouldn't like that one bit, no sir. there are too many questions in life as it is. there are some things in this world that i request be served to me. serialized tv shows coming to their natural and decided end are one of them (damn you, twin peaks and x-files!!!) another is for "tortured artists" not to kill themselves. is that too much to ask???

experiences, life-defining ones, are drawn from all sorts of perspectives and angles. i, more than likely, would not like nirvana today if they were still around and had kurt cobain found happiness. they'd probably suck. and i feel guilty, somtimes, for drawing inspiration and/or motivation from someone meeting their premature end because they "couldn't deal with it anymore." but the world needs those people. we need our cautionary tales just as much as we need our trivial tales. without one, the other wouldn't have nearly the same impact. it's sad, but true.

we are all tortured, right? we wouldn't have it any other way. what kind of boring life life would that be? one without pain, confusion, constant questions, regrets, death, destruction, terror, unrequited love, divorce, disease?

oh, that's right. it would be heaven.

go jesus.

dwight howard

(again)

was this post prescient? selfishly, i would argue, "yes". not that i was the only person in the world calling dwight howard a superhero after his sticker dunk last year. i was only one voice among the masses that were ready to hail dwight howard as our king. last year, we nominated him. this year? he won the election.

i won't fawn too much over him. i didn't even get to see it live. i was indisposed at our church's wildly successful spaghetti supper. but i watched the highlights when i got home from church today. and oh. my. god.

most dunk contests, you are lucky if you get one bright and shining moment to remember it by. this year, dwight had three of them (and gerald green had one. that's four! four bright and shining moments!!!). from bouncing the ball off the back of the backboard, to the superman dunk, to the left-handed tip off the board to himself, all were elegant and powerful and athletic in ways that i cannot even dream. i am serious. when and if i dream of dunking a basketball, it may be something like a stiff, two-handed jam in the lane. what dwight howard did last night was outside the realm of my imagination. just incredible.

so, here's to you dwight howard, basketball god. good job by you.

off the subject, but funny still i found it to read the last couple paragraphs of my post from this time last year. i haven't come very far in my search for "answers" yet and the momentum for church i picked up in late 2007 has completely waned. i guess i can't and shouldn't count on dwight howard, nba basketball freak, to bring me out of my mire. i won't ask him to save me. the nba dunk contest is quite enough, thank you.

"how do you prove a negative?"
(hannah and caroline and me, part eight)


you really can't escape this roger clemens stuff, can you? even if you pay far less attention to sports than i do, it's everywhere. and it's past annoying isn't it? i don't feel bad for roger clemens. i just wish he would go away. retire already. you no longer take part in the games and the pastime that will begin anew in a little over a month, so just hide away. pull a mark mcgwire. run from your lies. we'll forget eventually.

anyway, that's not what i wanted to talk about this morning. i was watching espn's first take about an hour ago and, as part of their clemens coverage, they had on, as a guest, a body language expert. she proved, to me, to be the only interesting commentator concerning this months-long mess that i've seen. part of her job is to watch, learn and study a person's behavior while giving testimony and see if they show any "tells" while they are speaking that might prove the words that are coming out of their mouth aren't entirely truthful. and she ripped roger clemens apart. even from the very beginning of the hearing yesterday, by watching the rocket's mannerisms, she could tell that he was preparing to deceive. it was quite fascinating to witness her dissection of the hearing and how the "hall of fame" pitcher differed in his "delivery" when compared to brian mcnamee. one thing she said, though, stood out to me and and sent my brain in a new and more relevant direction.

i am paraphrasing, but it was something like...

"in my opinion, the difference between a person that is lying and a person that is telling the truth is whether they are trying to convince or to convey. roger clemens was very convincing. he did a wonderful job at trying to make the committee believe that what he was saying was truthful. but when you are conveying, you don't have to "prove a negative". you just have to tell the truth."

do you know what the first thing was that popped into my head when the body language expert uttered these words? it was humc's choir director stopping the congregation and pleading with us to "sing louder." "don't you fools get it? god, himself, is looking down on you and can not be one bit happy at the volume of your collective voices. now clear your freakin' throats and let's raise the roof off this motherscratchin' sanctuary." <cue kirk franklin's revolution> (note: the second quote played more in my head than in reality.) you are right, allen. fuck this introspective shit i am trying right now. margaret, play something that we hear all the time! it's time to get loud up in here.

and i couldn't help but think that this is why we are failing at the buisiness of being a church. and why sarah and julie and the rest of the children's place advisory board have their work cut out for them when it comes to trying to convince huffman united methodist that the daycare is worth it's weight in "apples" and worth the time and energy that is being poured into it by an incredibly small percentage of our membership. because we are too busy trying to convince ourselves and, to a lesser degree, trying to convince others that we are christians. and that's not to say that we and i aren't, but who, exactly, are we trying to convince?

case in very simple point. we can take hannah and caroline to church. we can read the bible together. we can read scripturally based books. we can watch and sing along to veggietales. we can find tons of reasons and ways to convince our offspring that jesus is the way, the truth and worthy of following. and if that is all that we do, in twenty years, they will be no more close to a true relationship with their creator than they are now at four years and five months old, respectively.

as a church, local, and a church, universal, who are we trying to convince that we are christians? the unchurched homeless families across town? really? why not the "angels" and their families that live right next to us and travel through our parking lots after school or, god forbid, the ones that come through our door five days out of the week? listen, i am all for mission and experiences outside of what we know, but can we truly claim to take care of others if we can't take care of ourselves? who are we trying to convince?

and that's just it. this convince vs. convey problem, for the moment, makes me loathe the idea of going to church. i am sure my sunday school class and others can read it. sarah tells me that you don't have to be a body-language expert to know that something is off with me. but i feel like i am drowning inside a place that, as a collective, is having a hard time conveying the love of christ because we are too busy convincing each other and "others" of our christian love.

of course, there are individual exceptions. many, in fact. of course, not all is lost. this is where i am. today. but it's also why cuss words and the like don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. hannah and caroline will ultimately decide for themselves what type of faith they subscribe to. i wouldn't have it any other way. but they will also know, in addition to their secular and christian education ( both of which are not only important, but vital), that i love them and that i love jesus. it won't be something that i have to prove. it will be there on the surface, conveyed to them and for all to see.

i'll just have to tell the truth.

these people would not approve of me.
(that's probably not an altogether bad thing.)


it's way lazy for me to ape a deadspin post, let alone a weekend deadspin post, and put it here so that i can feel better about not putting any real time into writing this weekend, but this was too good to pass up. i ask you to read this and be amused. if you feel led, let me know how it strikes you in the comments. the deadspin commenters do a great job, as usual, splitting the issue's lip like a young tyson, but it's hard to not feel like this is where we are headed as a christian society.

in our churches that battle with what degree we should let the secular world integrate itself into our traditions and routines, this also strikes me as particularly timely since my sunday school class talked about (and planned to talk more...knock on wood.) practicing our beliefs in the gray areas of our denomination this morning. groups like the christian defense coalition cannot operate in anything but a black and white world. in their world, you cannot say certain words. that is that. if you don't practice what they preach, you are wrong. there isn't a whole lot of grace or gospel-style "love" in that stance, but it's their bag. take it or leave it.

i struggle with these types of "black and white" christians, because it feels like they've limited themselves in their ability to grow and relate to the secular heathens they would confess they are witnessing to. not that there is anything wrong with structure and discipline. as i shared this morning with my friends, without finding some structure in his life that he could buy into, i think my brother, brian, would tell you, himself, that he would still be broken and looking for answers in the wrong places.

obviously, there is the opposite extreme. other people, even church people, completely reject any and all black and white concerns because they see themselves as smarter than the average bear or operating on a higher level than the rest of us and, thus, make their own rules up as they go along. more power to this group, but i think it can be equally damaging to one's growth.

so, it's confusing, just like everything is. chris perry and i constantly debated this as we tried to find common ground, pun intended (you like that, chris???), with those that we were trying to serve in huntsville. how much rope do we tie to ourselves as we jump away from our mission and priority, that being god, into the waters of "the world"? how much slack do we allow ourselves so that we can, realistically, know that we can be pulled back without our "walk" being permanently damaged or corrupted.

i don't know the answer, but i do know this. the christian defense coalition and organizations of their like piss me off, because they give me a bad name. they give my priority and mission a bad name. and they make my heart hurt, because a life with jesus in your heart should dictate you being more warm and more open to those that you disagree with, not the other way around.

until the answer comes more into focus, i'll be painting my town black, white and gray all over.

why julio matters


since it's late, let me go ahead and make my point first and then, if all the rambling afterwards doesn't make sense, it won't matter if i lose my way. my point is this. whether julio jones ever plays a snap for the alabama crimson tide or not makes zero difference to how instrumental, if not monumental, his signing today was to bringing alabama "back". none. zip. nada. the damage is done. and if you are an auburn fan or a tennessee fan or a fan of any college team other than alabama, you should be concerned at the very least. at the very most, you should be terrified.

today was the day that alabama fans have hoped for. it was the day that alabama fans, like me, that weren't truly aware during bear bryant's golden years have pined for. it was the day that the national title in 1992 suggested at but was never allowed to come to fruition due to a series of blunders, bad decisions and, let's face it, crimson "fans" breaking rules. it was the day that all of the school's resources, money, big name coaches and no-name super-recruiters joined together in perfect sync to draw the most impressive group of high school seniors to tuscaloosa ever (try not to get blinded by all the stars). ever.

and the leader? the moses that anchored the group that will be remembered for years to come, barring anything illegal or unforseen, as the class that announced alabama's return? his name is julio. julio jones. why is he the name above all names? why is he more important today than burton or tyler or even star? because he's already a legend. if you are even a casual college football fan, if someone says the name, "julio", you know who they are referring to. to some in this state, he's already an icon. he will soon be a brand. why? because according to the worldwide leader in sports, he the most gifted high school senior in the nation. not just the state. not just the southeast. the. nation. he is the most high profile athlete ever to pick alabama (to this day, i still feel jilted by tim heisman) and it's not just us, the fans, that noticed. it's the high school seniors that came to alabama to play with him. it's the high school juniors that will want to come next year. it's the parents (the ones that live through the accolades of their children) of high school sophmores and freshmen that heard, today, that alabama was now shown in lights, decorated with tinsel, no longer clouded with the suspicion of being past it's prime.

because julio came today, others (and by others, i mean five and four-star others) will come tomorrow. and the next year. and the next. and hopefully by the time julio leaves to be a top ten pick in the nfl, alabama will have re-settled into the perennial power it used to be and that will be enough, not just a coach and resources and money and no-name super-recruiters, to lure the crop that will take the reigns from him.

it's an exciting day to be an alabama football fan because it is a day filled with hope. a day that builds on the hope that a new coach brought with him just over a year ago. a day that will underscore how fortunate the sec has been to have had alabama backed into a corner for years. for years, alabama has been swinging aimlessly with eyes wide shut and with less than a fully-loaded gun, only occasionally striking a knockout blow (see: tennessee, 2007). a young man, probably unknowingly for the most part, has ushered in something new.

why does julio matter? because everything just changed. here's hoping it feels familiar.

mommy turns 30

over the lifespan of this blog, you haven't seen too many "odes to sarah". and there are good reasons for that. firstly, that is not really the purpose for which this blog is intended. secondly, you would think that if there was anyone in this world that i would be able to communicate with person to person, face to face, cell phone to cell phone, and not have to trust my measured and deliberate blog posts to accurately affirm how special that person is, it would be my wife. you would think that, but you would be wrong. well, most of the time you would be.

if there has been one "sacred cow" as it relates to my sharing myself and my life with the internet-viewing public, it's been my marriage. it wouldn't be fair to me or to sarah to play out the daily peaks and valleys that both of our emotions go through online. it just wouldn't. and as it regards this site's centered mission, my hope is that our girls will notice first-hand how much i care for sarah and she for me and that anything in the future that they may read about along those lines would be overkill.

so, today's post will be an exception to my rule. but a lovely exception, indeed.

it's hard to remember, at this point, my life without sarah. so much has changed since september of 2000. so much has changed that when i try to put the last seven years into some sort of context, i need a sun to revolve my shady and sometimes muddled memories around. that sun, of course, has been sarah. i don't really know what she saw in me when we first met. she would probably tell you that i was nice and shy and different from certain boys she had wasted her time with before. she would probably tell you the story of how i wouldn't ask her to dance at our friends' wedding and she would leave out the part that it was, most likely, the champagne that loosened her up enough to ask me. she would probably tell you that our first conversation was nothing out of the ordinary but maybe everything out of the ordinary at the same time. she would probably tell you that, had she never called me after the wedding, i would have never called her (she'd be wrong.). and then she could tell you that i rightly played the role of gentleman when we went out to eat at some lousy diner that "had good vegetables" and never once did i think of telling her that such a place was quite foreign to me.

i don't remember too many specific details of our courtship. then again, i don't remember a lot of things. my brain is funny that way. i remember it was relatively short. i remember i gave her the crappiest, most boring proposal story that she ever could have imagined. and then we got married. and it was good. our honeymoon provided just the right amount of perfection and funny stories that ended up working out for our best that we glow about it today just like we did immediately after we got back.

for five and a half years now, she has come to understand how truly imperfect i really am. i have upset her. i have made her happy. i have dragged her through the mud and then helped to wipe her off. i have assisted her in making two beautiful girls. we are failing miserably (or triumphing brilliantly, depending on who you ask) at keeping their formative and most impressionable years free from curse words and reality tv. for the time we have been married, we have been very...human. case studies, even, in how it is not natural for selfish people to live together in "harmony" under the same roof and live to tell a completely happy tale. the trade-offs that we have made with and for each other have not been fair and balanced. she has never asked me to give up something i enjoy. she has never told me that i suck at basketball and that my attitude after losing a softball game makes her want to leave me. she has never told me that i am a dick for how i deal with my parents. she has never once questioned my spotty and sometimes spiteful relationship with god. she has never made me eat green beans. she has never told me that, if i cherished time on earth with my family, i should never eat a kikerburger again. she is always positive. always pleasant. even when she's sad. even when i am looking for a fight.

i, on the other hand, am not always so understanding. my wants, even when governed, feel like they should trump hers. i am a baby. i whine. currently, she is completely engrossed with saving my church's daycare, serving as a wonderfully vivid metaphor for the (way longer) time that i could not see past my staff responsibilities at the same church and in huntsville long enough to see her. and while i am proud of her and root for her success and wish for her to be involved to the point that she is no longer kevin's unseen "better-half", i want her home. i want her help. i need to be sure of her. nevermind that she is doing all this extracurricular championing on top of her "day job". nevermind that it is the most glorious and glaring example of "what church should be" that any member of our congregation is currently displaying. nevermind the bollocks. i just want my wife home. right?

of course not. of course i want her to share the same passion for what i believe is important. for my fuse and motivation have been extinguished with buckets of apathy and shortsightedness. the o'kelley's must represent. and she is fucking representing.

today, my sarah turns 30. she's nervous about it, because it sounds "old". she knows it's just a number and she knows she's being silly. the "sense of doom" that she feels is altogether natural and horrifying at the same time. mortality winking its twitchy little eye at you is never an easy feeling. she has been looking in my direction for comfort and there is little that i can offer that will help. tomorrow, she'll think about it less. and less the next day. she won't be fooling herself. that's just how it works. as miserable as we'd like to think that we are most of the time, there is way too much good to dwell on to worry with being sad constantly. life is good. depression is the art of telling yourself otherwise.

i am going to be fiercely honest. my life is good because of my sun, my sarah. there is no other reason. there is no other rhyme. that's it. yes, there are other good things and good friends and good family in my life. but my life is good because of her. and on this, the day of her 30th birthday, i will tell her that in many ways. and i will tell her that here, so she can read it at work and hopefully be happy. so she can reminisce some and remember that work isn't really that important, at least not today. i will tell her here so that none of you (and by you, i mean me.) will ever confuse my happiness with something as trivial as eli vick making me a giants fan for a quarter or the possibility of a high-school senior coming to play a game for a school i didn't attend.

finding the true meaning of my life and understanding what joy is and should be are gifts given to me by my god.

my happiness is rooted in the person that will share, in every way, the rest of my journey here on earth and, if we are lucky, for eternity.

happy birthday, sarah. i love you.