You keep a picture of WHAT above your desk?

I keep a large, framed photograph of the RMS Titanic above my desk.

There are a lot of reasons for that. I’ve always been interested in the Titanic story. It’s a great people story. There are lessons to be learned from the history. There was really no reason for the accident to happen, so there is the angst about what could have been.

The biggest reason for keeping the photo where I can see it is that the story is proof of the fact that none of us is too big, too smart or too rich to fail. And that includes me.

Every once in a while I announce to the family that I have just hatched my latest brilliant plan. I never add the bit about it being a plan which cannot fail. I know better. In fact, since very few of my brilliant plans ever work, my wife and kids have learned to seek cover anytime I announce my latest red hot idea.

The Titanic started out as someone’s latest brilliant design. It was a heckuva ship, well equipped. But it was operated by over-confident humans who turned someone’s brilliant idea into a really big anchor. The ship’s captain, James Smith, was quoted as saying that modern shipbuilding had advanced beyond the point where ships sank. I’m sure he believed what he said.

History tells us that Smith was wrong and that’s my point here: There is no such thing as a plan which cannot fail. Ask the talent-laden Miami Heat or Philadelphia Eagles about fail-proof ideas. Ask the unbeatable Baltimore Colts about their game plan against the New York Jets before the third Super Bowl. Ask Hall of Fame relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley about over confidence against gimpy-legged home run hitters.

Ask real estate speculators about all the land they bought eight years ago. Ouch.

The human ego frequently leads us to ignore human history. Eventually, it leads us to supremely human failures. If you glance at history, you’ll find we really don’t stop making the same mistakes. The biggest mistake we keep making is the one Captain Smith made all those years ago and that is believing that we have advanced too far as humans to fail on a large scale.

We can fail. We do fail. And we will fail. But, if we study history with an eye toward learning from it, we can learn to contain the scope of our failures.

So I keep looking at my photograph of the Titanic and, sooner or later, I hope to learn something from it.

Thanks for reading.

LSU and Alabama have a date

            This is not the news the people in charge of the Bowl Championship Series wanted to hear, but the two best teams in college football have already played once, went into overtime and are currently ranked first and second.

            In the Western Division of the Southeastern Conference.

            They are Louisiana State University and the University of Alabama. LSU beat Alabama in overtime a few weeks ago in a game played on Alabama’s home field.

            The BCS title game is designed to generate massive television ratings. It is the ultimate college football game, created for television. Don’t allow the nonsense that the game was created to determine the champion of college football confuse you. It was created to use college football to create a revenue stream.

When Alabama plays LSU for the title, which is what should happen, there is a concern among the BCS bosses that the ratings will slip because the teams have already played once.

Alabama and LSU are the best teams in the country. There just isn’t any doubt. They should play again. But the BCS championship game is not about what’s right. It is about the money the game will generate for a television network and all the others with a hand in the cookie jar.

LSU will play Georgia for the SEC championship in December. LSU could lose the SEC title game and still be ranked high enough to get a berth in the national championship game. Thus, two teams who did not win their conference championship could play for the national championship. Crazy? Sure.

But LSU and Alabama are the best teams in the country and nothing is going to change that.

If all of the above sounds like a plea for a playoff among college football’s best teams and conferences, it should not. A playoff system is wrong for the NCAA’s Division I. That subject is best for another blog at another time.

If the BCS does nothing else, it gets all of us talking about college football. We rant, we rave, we get confused. And we talk about college football.

            Some of us write about it.

            Thanks for reading.

Stewart's winning pass...one week early

            Tony Stewart’s championship-winning drive at Homestead-Miami over the weekend was one for the ages. One of the best one-race performances I’ve seen.

            Stewart’s talent and experience were on display for the world to see Sunday. He had to cut through the field twice to get to the front and he did that. He had to out-run championship leader Carl Edwards over the final 37 laps and he did that.

            But, as every racing reporter writes this week about the stunning performance Smoke turned in to win the title in the last race of the season, there is one pass Stewart made that nobody will write about that was actually the key to the championship.

            And it didn’t happen in Florida. Heck, the move wasn’t even Stewart’s.

            Stewart was running fourth with a few laps remaining in the season’s penultimate race two weeks ago in Phoenix, Arizona. He was not in contention to win that late in the going, but he had a solid finish going.

            Driving a Chevrolet, Stewart drew close to another Chevy driver, Jeff Burton. Now, Stewart and Burton do not drive for the same team. Their respective teams do not have a technical alliance. Stewart’s team buys chassis and engines from the Rick Hendricks team and Burton drives for Richard Childress.

            But Stewart and Burton both drive Chevrolets. Edwards drives a Ford.

            Burton, who is among the most respected drivers of the era, did not have a chance to win the Sprint Cup championship this season. But in the closing laps at Phoenix, Burton gave Stewart plenty of room to pass Burton and gain one final position before the end of the race.

            That one position was the difference between Stewart winning the title and Edwards winning the title. The championship ended in a tie and Stewart won it because he won more races during NASCAR’s season-ending Chase than Edwards did.

            Had Burton stubbornly kept Stewart behind him at Phoenix and had the race at Homestead-Miami gone exactly as it did Sunday, Carl Edwards would be celebrating his first championship and Stewart’s drive of a lifetime would have been noted as a great effort, albeit a losing one, by pundits.

            Thanks for reading.

What will the next great one-liner be?

Writers are always on the listen for the next great one-liner. You never know when it might come or who might roll it out. Circumstances sometimes play a part, but frequently they come from out of nowhere.

Babe Ruth, the legendary baseball player, was asked if he felt it was appropriate for him to make more money than the President of the United States. Babe answered in the affirmative and said, “I had a better year.”

But that was Babe Ruth, one of the great quote machines of his age. You would expect Ruth to get off a good one now and again.

Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, another media-friendly baseball Hall of Famer, had some tirades during his years as the Dodgers skipper that have reached legendary status. He was once asked his opinion of Dave Kingman’s performance when the Cubs outfielder beat the Dodgers with three home runs in one game. The answer is long and unprintable, but you can find it on You Tube. Search for Lasorda Audio Stew.

“You ask me my opinion?” the stunned Lasorda replies. “What (in the world) do you think my opinion of it was? I think it was (absolutely very terrible).”

Sometimes, great lines come from unexpected sources. I was working with a student at California Lutheran University two basketball seasons ago, calling a basketball game on the school’s live streaming site. The subject matter was the athletic teams at the California Institute of Technology. My color commentator, a CLU senior named Greg Gelber, said Cal Tech was not a school noted for its athletic prowess.

“It’s more of a mental institution,” Gelber said.

Obviously, great lines are sometimes found in movie scripts. Lauren Bacall’s line from To Have and Have Not, “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow,” is a classic. So are two Clint Eastwood lines from his Dirty Harry films: “Do you feel lucky, punk?” and “Go ahead. Make my day.”

And I’ll never forget John Wayne’s “Fill yer hands you sonuva (gun),” from the original True Grit.

Bum Phillips, the former football coach, had a terrific line about the greatest football coach, Paul Bryant. Phillips was an assistant to Bryant when the two coached at Texas A&M.

Phillips said, “Bear Bryant could take his’n and beat your’n or he could take your’n and beat his’n.”

I invite you to improve upon that.

Another football coach, John Heisman, after whom the trophy was named, is credited with a great piece of advice: “When in doubt, punt.” Heisman, who was a little stern, is also widely quoted as telling his team, “Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

Then there is drag racing champion Jason Line, who was asked this week if his team would be racing Pontiacs next season. Line’s line was, “We need to race a brand that’s a little more relevant, or at least one that exists.”

Few people ever communicated better than Ronald Reagan. His invitation to the leader of the USSR (I can’t spell his name) to, “Tear down this wall,” is a classic. So was his response during a Republican presidential candidate debate, when someone threatened to turn off Reagan’s microphone: “I paid for this microphone.”

But my favorite Reagan line came during a debate with then-President Jimmy Carter. Carter said something candidate Reagan disagreed with, allowing Reagan to reply, “Well, there you go again.”

You never know when the next great line is going to pop up. That’s why they are so fun.

Thanks for reading.