Example 1: Brett Bielema at Wisconsin. Coach Bielema called a timeout in hopes of getting a call reversed and pinning Oregon inside their own 1 yard line. The play wasn’t reviewable and therefore early in the 3rd quarter Wisconsin was down to 1 timeout. In the final seconds with Wisconsin down they attempted to spike the ball in Oregon territory with :02 seconds on the clock. They spiked the ball but the clock ran out.

If Bielema knew that the play wasn’t reviewable or if he knew (or his assistants knew) the rulebook he wouldn’t have used the timeout and arguable had more time on the clock at the end of the game and would have been able to give his excellent QB a chance to win the game.

Example 2: Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State. Fast forward to the end of regulation in the Fiesta Bowl. Coach Gundy of Oklahoma State had 1 timeout left with Standford driving and  time running out. Seeing that Standford was going to play for the field goal Gundy saved his final timeout. Why? To attempt to “freeze” the redshirt freshman Standford kicker. It worked. The Standford kicker hooked the field goal and the game went into overtime where the same kicker missed yet another kick and Oklahoma State eventually won by, you guessed it, a field goal.

Did Beilema make a bad coaching decision and Gundy a good one? Yes. I understand Bielema’s thought process by calling a timeout in the hope that the officials would review a previous play and hopefully pin Oregon inside their own 1 yard line. Would it have mattered? Considering that Oregon had a 91 yard touchdown run earlier in the game I don’t think pinning Oregon down inside their own 1 yard line would have mattered.

Did Gundy make the right call? I believe so. It was only a few weeks ago that the NFL’s Dallas Cowboy’s coach Jason Garret “freezed” his own kicker on their very same field by calling a timeout right before a kick. This doesn’t always work but knowing that the kicker for Standford was a redshirt freshman and had already missed a kick earlier in the game Gundy had to believe that this was his teams best shot at forcing the game into overtime.

So there you have it, two examples of coaching. Two different outcomes and two different sets of emotions going through Madison, Wisconsin and Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Steve Jobs, 1984

FACT

A new friend of mine named Shon Peterson told me to about it while we were talking in Anthropology class as freshmen in High School. To this day I have never heard an album that changed the game like this one did. It sounded like the future. Not a future depleted of natural resources or travelling through the cosmos but one of passion, poetry and style with a bitchin paint job.

The ensuing Zoo TV tour blew my mind. It was the Internet age before the Internet. TV’s everywhere, sonic sounds blasting at every turn and 4 guys who could make a stadium seem small. Then you had Bono in as he says, “Lou Reed’s glasses, Jim Morrison’s pants and Elvis’s jacket” out in front. To this day, I think he looked like one of the coolest guys I’d ever seen. Hell, I bought a serious of leather jackets after that.

Now comes the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby.  20 years since I first heard the opening guitar riff of ‘The Fly’. 20 years since I heard Edge’s guitar make that future acid sound of ‘Mysterious Ways.’ 20 years since ‘One.’ 20 years since my World got unlocked to the sites and sounds of sci-fi rock’n'roll.

The one thing I came to be jealous of after all these years is that, at the end of the day, U2 is just 4 Irish kids who started a band. No band member change. No break up and reunion tour. Just 4 guys who love to create music together and somewhere along the line made a dent in the Universe.

What am I doing wrong here?

That same board decided that today was a good day to let her go. So much for the endorsement.

Did she deserve to go? I’m in no position to give an opinion. I do have one on Jerry Yang who didn’t sell Yahoo to Microsoft a few years ago for $33 a share or $47.5 billion….dude!

If you look at the current mass of unemployed I bet that a good portion of those folks are not math and science wiz’s. Yes I am speaking in broad based terms however I believe that there is something to it.

Where does that leave us? Well on the one hand those who are good at those things have a solid future staring them in the face as seen in this NPR story. Those who don’t have a solid math and/or science background are going to be fighting over the diminishing set of opportunities.

So how do we fix this? Well  part of this is to get those who are good in math and science to build for the greater good. Build to help bring those below them up. Appeal to their sense of common good, patriotism and humanitarianism.

The other part is to get the get the current set of unemployed re-educated. Instead of only handing out money with unemployment checks we need to also be handing out class schedules to the local community college. Get people back in a learning environment. We also need to appeal to local professionals to teach these classes. Encourage the local CEO to teach a few nights a week. Encourage or incetivze the local head of IT to give people a start in IT,etc.

Now we need to get going.

It is not 3rd behind Melbourne and Vienna. Behind Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Sydney, Helsinki and Perth.

Does anyone else see a pattern developing?

This however is not the real issue. What is the issue is that the media and the ‘crowd’ are not thinking anew. Abraham Lincoln once said ‘As our case is new, we must think and act anew. ‘ This is a different World. The US and Europe are not the sole engines for growth. We have others coming online such as Brazil, India, and China. Multinational companies know this as they are expanding to these places. However the biggest obstacle we dace is not the American consumer suffering from exhaustion or the US Federal Government grinding to a halt. It’s the lack of understanding by the overall ‘crowd’ and the media.

It’s no secret my thoughts on the media by the overall ‘crowd’ needs to get a clue. We are in a global information economy not some old school industrial based economy. We now have the idea in one country, fund it in 2 others and build it in 4 others. With this we need knew ways of thinking, new custom rules. and  willingness to let go of the past.

Think of it this way, do Soccer clubs limit themselves to just the country they’re in to the players they can sign? No. How bout teams from the NBA or Major League Baseball? They find players from all over the globe. Young ones at that. Heck Real Madrid just signed a 7 year old from Argentina.    

We must start thinking anew. Today.

First let me say that I am also a security freak and understand, appreciate and accept the need for secure borders. Borders that are secure from violence, mass desctruction and all the other things that come through our imaginative minds. I however do not believe that we should close our borders to business, labor, or ideas out of fear of the afore mention things.

There are lives to live, ideas to tackle, inspiration to be harnessed and money to be made “over there”. It should be made easier for someone to live and work in Canada, Brazil, Germany, etc. Maybe someone’s skills could be more valuable in Munich as opposed to Santa Barbara. Maybe someone’s idea has better reception in Toronto than in Sao Paulo. Perhaps the best computer programmer really wants to live and work in San Jose.

I find inspiration in people like David Neeleman who founded Jet Blue Airlines. Yes, say what you want about the airline now but it was a game changer in it’s day. I saw that he started a similar airline in Brazil called Azul. Why? He saw an opportunity and went after it. I’m sure the paperwork is not stacked in his favor but he’s still doing it (and I’ve seem some of this documentation and it’s archaic).

Look, we can’t be closed minded. We can’t say ‘they’re taking jobs from Americans’. We should go after the jobs. We should be a part of the ideas wherever they may reside cause right now America isn’t cutting it. We’ve some how lost that risk taking mentality and gone instead to the hand out ‘where’s mine?’ mentality. That won’t cut it and a way to reverse that is to branch out outside of our borders and find what it is that does inspire us, challenge us and in the end make us and America successful.