Here's a funky introduction of how nice I am.....

As some of you know, my lovely bride Dawn and I founded a community service organization for the athletes at our local high school.

www.streaksservetheburg.com

As a result, I've found myself spending a lot of time with teenagers.  That's something I never thought would happen as I figured I paid my dues on the teenage thing and would mainly interact with the lone teenager under my roof and his assorted friends.  However, life throws unexpected (and wonderful) twists and here I am in all my 40+ dorkiness interacting with a great group of kids.  Dawn has a natural knack for it, while it's something I've had to grow into.  One of the main lessons about enjoying teens is to set fire to your expectations and enjoy the ride.  Once you remove the control lobe from your brain (a daily exercise for a control freak like me) it's pretty exhilarating.

One example of this was our spring break trip to Mississippi last April.  We did a service trip to Gulfport, MS to help with a house teardown.  One ritual in our van was that some of the kids would ask Dawn to rap every day on our way back to camp.  I don't know how this started, but it was purely for comic value.  My wife has many great qualities, but rapping is not one of them. She would make up words, repeat words for the sake of rhyming and generally deliver a freestyle rap that was like nails on a chalkboard.

That sets up the most bizarre experience I've had in the recruiting process to date.  On Wednesday we were visiting one of the most formidable football programs in the entire country.  The day was culminated with a visit with Coach X.  Coach X is so high profile that even those of you who don't know a football from a watermelon would remark that you are sure that you've seen him before if you saw him out in public.  In tow, we had a family friend who is also being recruited by this school and one of Landon's friends who was along for the ride. Somehow, and I can't for the life of me remember or imagine how this happened, someone briefly said something to Dawn about her rapping for the kids.  

Coach X was immediately fascinated with this.  He wanted to hear it.  We tried to shake it off; he immediately would steer the subject back to Dawn and her MC skills.  I tried to change the subject, he persisted and asked for a rap.  Next thing I know I'm in a huge office decorated with championship trophies watching my wife rap for a guy paid over 2 million dollars a year.  The rap was about his dogs.  

Later, I walked silently out of the football facility and told my bride that nothing in this wild recruiting process can or will be that bizarre.  It's like something that I'd dream after a night of bad mexican food.

I'm in the process of developing thrash metal, rap, and punk songs for all of the schools we will be visiting in the future.

Word to your mother.........

-Macker

PS- RECRUITNIKS, THE SCHOOL WAS NOT IN VIRGINIA SO GUESS AWAY........

FEAR THE TURTLE!!!!

Greetings dear readers (reader?  greetings thin air?  hello?)

Anyway, my relatively anonymous blog affords the opportunity to scream an exciting piece of news out loud.

My absence of posts was no doubt a huge daily letdown to my litany of fans (fan? hello? is this thing on?).  The lame, but honest, explanation for that is as follows:

1) Time:  I'm interim department chair now and they actually expect me to work and act like a grownup.  The taxpayers of Virginia are starting to get their money's worth, but it's really cutting back on mindless loitering on the internet.

2) Topics:  My two main topics on this blog have been Landon's football recruiting and running.  As many of you faithful followers (follower?  is that an echo?) know, I've been up and down on the running thing to the point where I enjoy it but am not really motivated to write about it.  As for Landon, I freakin' love talking about recruiting and am no doubt boring the crap out of 75% of Rockingham County.  The problem is now that we've entered in to the real meat of the recruiting phase, we have to have something of a poker face.  There are too many recruitniks out there in cyberspace.  An honest appraisal of Landon's visits, what he liked, and especially what he didn't like is liable to give attention we really don't need and lead to potential misunderstandings with coaching staffs.  As crazy as it seems that they may find this site, stranger things have happened and people (recruitniks, not coaches) are already misinterpreting and twisting things about Landon.

So, even though I know who he likes, who he doesn't and what type of school he's looking for, I can't say much.  What I can tell ALL of you is that Landon just got his first offer!  I got an e-mail reply message (hear that NCAA?  He was replying to me and didn't initiate  contact prior to September 1st as stipulated in paragraph 5, clause zz in your 1,000 page recruiting regulations) from a UMd. coach that said that they would love for Landon to be part of their future and that an offer would be coming to us the first week of September (see NCAA? We did not receive a written offer prior to September 1 of his junior year as stipulated in your harumph harumph blah blah blah).  

Actually, this is apparently his second offer.  When I called Landon's coach to tell him the news, I was informed that Virginia Tech has also stated the same thing, but went through Landon's coach instead of us.  This was, of course, because they didn't want to initiate contact (NCAA, we and these schools are as white as the driven snow so far).  The coach also stated that he felt Landon had three offers because [university name withdrawn] said they were going to offer Landon after making sure that he was healthy and doing well after a couple of games.  I'm still counting two.  To count [university name withdrawn] at this point would be like someone saying they are engaged because their fiance stated that they would be asking for their hand in marriage provided the next few dates go well.  

Anyway, I'm real proud of Landon and his accomplishments to date.  The next few months should be really interesting.  So interesting that I paradoxically can't write much here.  I mean, I can't even write about the new BMW that I've been promised by an SEC school (kidding NCAA, kidding).

PS-  THIS OFFER DOES NOT MEAN THAT LANDON IS OR IS NOT GOING TO ANY OF THESE SCHOOLS.  I just needed to say that in the off chance that recruitniks or coaches actually see this (hello?)