Google Atmosphere: 1

So today I'm at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. This will be a collection of thoughts and announcements as they occur.

Google Docs product manager just announced an interesting set of features. Most notably, the ability for co-editing of documents and spreadsheets. This will allow Google docs to compete and comply more directly with Microsoft's O14 release.

The NCAA Football Conference Argument

Ok, it seems that this topic comes up *all the time*...especially here in the land of Orange. Being a more fact-based person for things of this nature, I wanted to get some data out there for discussion.

First, let me state that: I have NO PARTICULAR BIAS TOWARD ONE CONFERENCE OR ANOTHER. I'm not going to argue for or against a conference...just put out there some data that I've brought together.

Now, here's what I did and I've learned.

First, I needed a time frame. Not wanting to data mine all of the data on NCAA D-1 football, I decided on something more arbitrary: my lifetime. I figure that makes for a good enough boundary for starters. (NOTE: *YES* if you go back father it will change the results. Conferences have grown in size and membership which also skews the data a touch. So going back before the 1970's is a good cut-off.)

Second, I'm looking into conference effectiveness, so I pulled all of the NCAA D-1 championships (winners & losers by conference). It's too easy to stop at just who won. To get a first level of depth we need to know what conferences were matched up.

Third, I excluded from aggregation teams that played in fewer than 5 total championships and unaffiliated teams. This took away the WAC (1 appearance of BYU & the only conference win) and Notre Dame (6 appearances, 3 wins).

~The Results ~
By Championships: the SEC (11), Big 12 (9), and PAC 10 (6).

By Appearances: the Big 12 (21), SEC (17), and Big 10 (15).

By Winning Percentage:the PAC 10 (75%), SEC (65%), and ACC (56%).

So, my preliminary conclusions...

1. The Big 12 has been in more championship games in my lifetime than any other conference.

2. The SEC has won more championship games in my lifetime, but

3. The PAC 10 is more likely to win a championship game.

Since the SEC placed 1st or 2nd in each of the inital 3 categories evaluated, for now, the data shows that the SEC is the most awarded conference in my lifetime.
Other notes:

By Program: Notre Dame (6), Miami & USC (5), Alabama & Oklahoma (4) titles each.

Next steps:

To evaluate further the "real strength" of the conferences, we have to look at the competition.

-- It's not enough to say that a conference has 1 or 2 good teams and that makes the conference great. How do they compare intramurally and extramurally (inside and outside the conference folks)?

-- I'd like to see bowl earnings to date, if I could explore that (kind of like the money leaders in golf).

Want to contribute??

I find this site (College Football Poll.com) as a fantastic resource for all kinds of data. Go here, pull up Excel and crank out some objective data. Post on your blog or comment here!

More to come as time allows.... :)

CH 15: Let Us Be Intentional

We're at the end of this journey. So let's evaluate Eldredge a bit. I'll start by asking the big question that's been on my mind from early on.

When I'm intentional about male relationships, who am I initiating?

It seems to me that if God's desire is to use the longing of our hearts to draw us out into "wilderness" and closer to Him, then no form of male initiation or intention will suffice.

To the question, the simple and apparent answer would be: myself! Every time I am intentional it's me who benefits and grows, right. Despite my desire to help another man grow, it will always benefit me. That seems a bit self serving to me.

On the other hand, let's be frank, life is about your (*my*) growth and maturity toward Christ-likeness…which requires many forms of spiritual leadership, servant leadership, and submission. The kinds that come from a variety of male relationships and encounters. Even if my relationship isn't directly with another man, for example - my wife, dealing with and expressing challenges of that relationship to other men provides further initiation. The self serving part comes in that: on some level, whatever I do to stand in the gap of failed male examples and relationships, some part of me is destined to fail precisely because that's what God needs. He needs both success and failure so He can use it to bring about His glory and His success/significance.

Maybe I'm over-analyzing a bit. Maybe I'm trying to read too much into God's plan. Maybe I'm reading too much into Eldredge. Personally, I do feel like I'm putting too much on Eldredge. He doesn't have all the answers. He's just trying to get us men off of our rears and engaged with each other. But this isn't a book about going fly fishing in order to find our inner male. It's about being taking relationships with other men as seriously as we do our wives, as we do our work, as we do our sports!

And maybe, *maybe*, inside all of this intention, we might discover that piece of ourselves that connects with God's intention for us - as men - and as His sons.

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CH 14: Sage

Ok, I'm going to try and dive deeper on one of Jesse's comments, because the Sage stage (ugh, alliteration!) is one that is *REALLY* important!!

Jesse wrote:

"Although you can't exactly raise a Sage, it is possible to raise the Sage in a
man. For instance, the author takes note of how an older man can be undeveloped.
This occurs when he either refuses to take the journey, or take note of his
journey. If he has failed to take stock of his experiences, then all we could
learn from him is lost. However, if we can draw out those experiences through
communication, or simply listening to him, we can bring out his words of
wisdom."

I have to argue with this. First, let me pull out some of my own bias, and part of why I feel compelled to differ on the point he's making.

I want to be a sage.

There, I said it. Now you all know that I strive to be a wise old man and have grown my goatee for the express reason of allowing my daughter(s) to see the grey grow in for I, like Jesse, have little in the way of a flowing mane. My desire isn't to sit atop a mountain at the end of a long flight of stairs and pontificate. I find comfort in truth. It comes out in my spiritual giftedness; it comes out at work, at home, in all I do. If you're around me enough, you'll eventually hear me say something along the lines of "I can tell it to you in black and white, but you have to live it in shades of grey." The idea being that there is truth in the world. Open and confident people take the truth as it is and learn from it.

Bias aside, I like Jesse's biblical quote of Solomon. That passage resonated with me as a young man in fact. Instead of being greedy and selfish, Solomon asked for wisdom to lead God's people (1 Kings 3: 5-12). This request came from Solomon's heart, but he had taken to heart his life's lessons - his truth to that point in his life. That's how he knew that he needed wisdom.

A secular example can be found in the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. In it he states that one of the qualities in common across all of the leaders of the companies they studied is that they took facts as facts. They asked customers or employees or the marketplace questions and they reflected on the input they got back earnestly. That flies in the face of how most people are. Most people do one or more of the following:

1. Don't ask for the data
2. Don't ask open sources for input (steer the outcome toward the positive)
3. Ignore unfavorable results (or all results)
4. Give defensive responses as to why the data is "skewed" or unfavorable (highlight excuses)
5. Use the input as reasoning to why you'll never get better in that regard ("See, I already suck, so why try?!")

So here's my issue with Jesse's quote and Eldredge's assertion: as a community of initiators, you MUST raise the sage in a man! That's right, if you're reading this you have a responsibility to help bring out the Sage in every Beloved Son or man.

Here's why.

Again, hold on to Eldredge's early assertion that you're never fully in or out of one stage. That means they aren't "linear." In order to "take note of the journey" the community of initiators has to give prompting and encouragement at every stage. Every interaction you have with a boy/man is an opportunity to encourage him to learn from what he's going through. let me try and state this another way...

Look at each chapter. Eldredge almost always starts with some episode from his life. With his sons, his own actions, whatever. The reason these moments are etched in his brain is because something happened that caused him to learn from what he went through. That requires discernment. That requires initiation. That requires a sage state of mind. Being a sage isn't another phase where you write your autobiography and capture all of your life moments. It's the ability to draw upon all of the various and faceted moments of your life and articulate the core meaning to someone who needs to hear it.

So you can raise a sage. I argue that we must! Isn't that exactly what God's asking us to do? Aren't we supposed to spend our lives being more like Christ which means always seeking to grow in knowledge and application of that glory to those in need?

WAKE UP YOUR WISDOM!!

Independence

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Ch 13: Raising the King

"You need to go back."

An interesting dilemma to pose from Eldredge. He says on page 240, that if you haven't lived through the stages of initiation, you need to go back and get them. Are these items on a shelf at Home Depot? Is my life supposed to be like City Slickers...I sign up for one of his lodge lessons, rope some steer and all of a sudden I'm all good??

I find that a bit perplexing.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't ways to get the lessons. He does state that LIFE will test you and he's stated earlier that you're never fully in or out of one stage v. another. Sooo...that would lead me to conclude that if I find myself at a time when I could inherit a kingdom, I need to test myself. I need to review my past experiences and draw out those things that either limit or strengthen my ability to execute as a King.

Maybe a life lesson becomes clearer in context.
Maybe a current issue can be resolved by another means.
Maybe I realize that this 'King moment' isn't mine to have and that level of discernment is a growth toward maturity all the same.

Something I learned a long time ago: you can't go back. There's no tried and true way for me to "re-capture" some aspect of my youth...to council my fears and failures into strength and compassion. What's done is done. The question for us as we move forward is how to incorporate those lessons into our greater growth.

It's the lessons we learn to draw on that becomes our measure of integrity, kindness, humility, generosity, and justice.

Everyday I am making numerous decisions about how to handle people and situations around me. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes wrong. How I learn from and respond to those situations and people in them is the greater measure of my growth as a man and follower of Christ. You see, we're all supposed to be on the path to be more like Christ. That requires me to yield myself to His teaching in every moment. What is it that God wants FOR me? How do I learn to align myself to take full advantage of the lessons I'm being taught on a daily basis?

This type of knowledge, or self-awareness, is the discernment of a king.

This also goes against isolation. (An issue that Jesse and I may pick up and write a book about as it relates to men.) By the age of 35, most men have only 2 close friends. By 40, that drops to 1. Why? Because we become more and more isolated as we age and society tells us that we're already "kings" who need to 'rule' over home and work. Yet even men who are failing at both, try to hide that fact by being isolated and apart from the community of men that they yearn for. (But I'll save this diatribe for another posting. :)