Not Quite Lunch With Jeff Immelt

It's probably no secret (at least to my banker) that I'm a lot more at home reading Sports Illustrated than the Financial Times, but FT (as I have learned you call it) has an interesting, entertaining and informative interview with Jeff Immelt '78 under the headline: Lunch with the Financial Times.

A few outtakes from the story, which I recommend even if, like me, when you see FT you think free throws:

(General Electric's) Cincinnati-born boss is unshakably polite, self-deprecating and relaxed ...

(Immelt) believes executives need to take personal responsibility for how much they get paid: “This notion that a CEO can make a boatload of money and turn around and say the comp committee made me take it, that’s rubbish.”

(M)y favourite Immeltian crime is “deviousness.”According to Immelt: “Deviousness is the death penalty 100 per cent of the time.” Even deviousness by omission is forbidden: “If I have to ask the perfect question to get the answer, you can’t work for me.”

“Lunch at my age is for fat people,” Immelt, a 6ft 4in former college football player with a head of full, if greying, hair, retorts. “I find that three meals a day is not conducive to my boyish good looks.”

Having read the story I think I would like Immelt, someone I can't recall ever having met. I wish I'd had the chance to interview him back when I was a legitimate media type. (If ever I was ;-) Oh, and the (Not Quite) Lunch With Jeff Immelt header at the top of the blog? Ya gotta read the story to find out why it was Not Quite.

The wraps come off tonight for Anthony Gargiulo as the Calgary Stampeders open the regular CFL season against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at 8 p.m., Mountain Time. From the Calgary Sun:

KEY STAT

3 -- The number of new starters on the Stampeders defensive line this season, as Terrence Patrick, Anthony Gargiulo and Keron Williams replace Rahim Abdullah, Demetrious Maxie and Sheldon Napastuk. The new group has a lot of speed but is short on experience.

The CFL may not be the NFL, but it's big-time compared to the Ivy League and with that comes more scrutiny. From a canada.com column written by a Calgary writer and headlined, Take these CFL predictions to the bank:

Because of injury or ineffectiveness, not a single member of Calgary's starting defensive line - Anthony Gargiulo, Keron Williams, Terrence Patrick - will be in the lineup when the playoffs begin.

This story mentions that the rec center in Roxbury, Mass., was named after John Shelburne, one of the first great black Dartmouth football stars back in 1919 and 1920.