Yesterday: The Jon Gruden Era at UM

Lyrics from a melancholy acoustic guitar ballad about a break-up:

Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Jon Gruden turned down the opportunity to coach the University of Miami's football team. Here's one perspective on why the megalomaniacal albino's no, while clearly not the act of a friend, may not be a bad thing.

Gruden made his mark in winning the Super Bowl in his first year as coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs in 2002. Gruden won [altogether now Cane fans] with Tony Dungy's players and a great defense built by Lane Kiffin. If that seems harsh, consider that Gruden never won another playoff game at Tampa Bay and his teams lost home wild-card playoff games in the two years they did make the playoffs. His final season there featured a team which collapsed after the same Kiffin announced he would be leaving when the season ended. Like Randy Shannon, Gruden was fired from his last coaching job in a year which began with a contract extension.

All in all, Gruden produced a .507 winning percentage in his seven year stint as a NFL head coach with Tampa Bay. I guess the genius bar is much lower in the post-Shula era, but even Trinidadians would blush at this level of limbo.

If, like me, you thought it odd that the negotiations with UM involved his brother. We shouldn't have. Coaching is apparently the most family of businesses. Gruden himself is the son of a coach and the 2nd generation names which have crossed his path in his career include; Griese, Kiffin, McKay, Shula, Simms. The theme from Deliverance would seem a nice fit for this degree of inbreeding.

However, given that Gruden is a fellow Roman Catholic, we shall put the above speculation aside and spare him the Saban treatment [eternal sports (i.e. unactionable) hatred]. But the Gruden era was instructive. As we get ready to watch the Heat travel to Cleveland tonight, if Gruden annoyed us this much in just 24 hours, imagine if they had televised his decision after dragging it out all summer.

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Liberal Catholics, Transubstantiation and Boise St

Index of Liberal Catholic Warriors for the Faith:

• Under Construction. See Episcopalian.

C'mon guys, don't ever lose your sense of humor. I mean your faith, well.... But never lose your sense of humor. Think of it as the only true historically peer-reviewed commandment.

I used to feel bad for liberal Catholics during the past score-ish years. Clearly discouraged by John Paul II's longevity and succession, their liberalism seemed to represent the 10th step in a 12-step program to leave the Church. Their main concerns have always struck me as more political than spiritual. The list is familiar:

• Female priests
• Nuanced stance on abortion
• Acceptance of homosexuality

One thought bothered me about that list. Transubstantiation. How could they keep transubstantiation off the list for so many years. I mean granted their main issues were literally sexy or sexual, but theologically speaking, they couldn't hold a jock strap [or panty] to transubstantiation in terms of the difficulty of true acceptance of Catholic teaching. That's why transubstantiation is the Boise State of Catholic theology. Think of the scandal if Boise State were kept out of the the BCS title game after 1,863 undefeated years.

Then one day it hit me like as if I was staring at Marcee in a Beautiful Mind. It's not real. Their list is not real. It's interesting and focus-grouped, but it doesn't represent the main concerns of adult Catholics, even liberal ones. A list of real concerns about the difficulty in accepting Catholic teaching would be more varied and less aligned with politically correct issues of the day.

Ever since that day, I'm the jaded guy in the crowd on the ground seemingly unaffected by the threats of 'jumping' from liberal Catholics on the ledge. If asked, my advice would be to go ahead and jump. Who knows, the distance they fall may not be as far as their oscillation would suggest.

If you think that opinion is judgmental, then you need to brush up on the difference between having an opinion on issues in the public domain and the type of judgment we are admonished not to engage in in the scriptures. One involves forming an opinion to the best of our abilities and the other presumes to know God's will. As an example, while I would prefer, if asked, that liberal Catholics jump, that is not judgmental. If I presumed to know where they would land when they jumped, now that's judgmental.

I recommend Fr Barron's take on the issue, although I doubt he would reciprocate.

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