Monday, February 24, 2025

The Real Thing

Missed this from Shane Cokes '23 last month:

From that posting:

To Dartmouth College: Coach Brooks, Coach Dobes, Coach Brown, Coach Mickey, and Coach Teevens-may he rest in peace-thank you for giving a 17-year-old kid from Dayton, Ohio, a chance. You helped me grow into the man and player I am today and instilled values that I will carry forever. To the College that has shaped me at my core and taught me lessons I will always cherish, I am eternally grateful to have grown up surrounded by those people and in those woods. 

Cokes finished his second grad transfer season at Colorado last fall with 17.5 tackles (2.5 for a loss with one sack), one quarterback hurry and one forced fumble.

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Dartmouth is looking for an Assistant Athletics Director for Leadership and Mental Performance. From the job posting (LINK):

This role will serve to enhance sport performance, well-being, and the all-around experience through the development of skills such as resilience, attentional focus, emotional regulation, motivation, self-efficacy, and sport enjoyment. 

Green Alert Take: If, like me, you stumbled a bit over "self-efficacy," here's a definition from the American Psychological Association (LINK): "An individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment."

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Elsewhere, ESPN has a terrific story about Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel. From the story (LINK):

McDaniel was such an attractive candidate as a student that the school's dean of admissions, Rick Shaw, pushed for (coach Jack) Siedlecki to make room in the program.

"I mean he's 5-foot-8. I think he (weighed) about a buck-40 and ran a 4.9 40 on a very sympathetic coach's watch," Siedlecki said. "So I mean, in reality, he wasn't going to be a player for us, but he was a kid who wanted to play football."

Green Alert Take: Talk about a Through the Looking-Glass concept. Instead of a football coach pleading with an admissions director to take a really good player, in McDaniel's case it was an admissions director pleading with a football coach to take a not-really good player.

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If you've been following along you know that I did my graduate work at Penn State, that Mrs. BGA's father got his masters at PSU and That Certain Nittany Lion '16 has a PSU degree – with none of us being from Pennsylvania. All that being the case, I hope you will indulge me when I proudly post yet another time about the university's 46-hour Dance Marathon, which concluded yesterday afternoon. Check out the moment when the largest student philanthropy in the world revealed how much money it raised For The Kids and their fight against childhood cancer:


That's $17.7 million for those of you who don't click through.

And here's the compulsory football content:

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EXTRA POINT

Last night I went to recharge the handwarmers I tuck into my mittens when I hike in temperatures of single digits and lower. As usual, I studied the micro USB charging cord, then the port on the handwarmer, and arranged the flat side of the plug properly. Or thought I had, only to have to flip the cord over a couple of times before finally getting it to sit properly. I don't know about you but I find those micro USB connections with one curved side and one flat side incredibly annoying. Lightning cords on iPhones,  iPods, iPads and the like can go in either way, which is a step forward. But knock-off Lightning cords can be problematic, and if you put the phone or iPod in your pocket, you know that hassle that lint in the opening can cause. All of which is by way of applauding USB-type C, which goes in either way and all-but eliminates the lint issue. I've got a few electronic that charge with USB-C and they are never a hassle. For what it's worth, I have read that Apple's new iPhones switched to USB-C charging and that's almost enough to convince me to buy one. Notice I said "almost." ;-)

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