My Grandpa seemed to have a pithy saying for every situation. Being a man of few words, the words he did use tended to pack more of a punch. So in his own way, Grandpa always got his message across, and taught me many things about life. When he would beat Grandma in cards, after a bit of squawking from her about bad cards, bad luck, etc., he’d wink in my direction and say, “The cream always comes to the top.” Grandma hated that one. When there was a disagreement, Grandpa would never argue. But after listening to Grandma’s soliloquy du jour for quite some time, he would wait for a pause and say, “Well, there are two schools of thought on that, yours and mine.” And that’s where it usually ended.
Grandpa’s been gone for 20 years now, but as I make my way in life, one of his sayings will frequently pop into my mind. As I’ve watched the St. John’s football team this season, I can’t help but be reminded of one of those sayings:
“Once you have a reputation for being and early riser,” my Grandpa used to tell me, “You can sleep ’til noon everyday.”
I suppose there are two lessons in this. One, your reputation is so important because once people think of you in a certain way, they are likely to always think of you like that, even if they never see you again. Two, once you have a reputation, you can change. It may become less important what you actually do, because you still may be judged on how you are perceived. And so it goes, I suppose, with Johnnie football. The winning tradition is our reputation, but the play of the team, particularly the offense, looks like we’re sleeping in. Being known as a winner should not lend itself to complacency on the field. But our offense is in dire need of an alarm clock. Maybe we haven’t been aggressive enough in recruiting the best players to come to SJU. Or perhaps the coaching staff has slept through their charge of motivating players and preparing an appropriate game plan. Or are the players nodding off when it comes to seeing that the game plan gets executed?
I’d say it’s time for a wake-up call. The coffee’s on.
