Author’s note: occasionally in Columbus and especially by OSU football fans, I am alleged to be anti-OSU. Nothing could be farther than the truth—I strive since 2004 for students, faculty colleagues, and highly qualified staff, none of whom receive the respect and rewards they deserve. That remains my goal.

Part One

The president and the university: Who fails whom?

In a typically flawed effort at reporting or explaining Ohio State University president Kristina Johnson’s pseudo-sudden resignation under orders from the Board of Trustees (BOT), the Columbus Dispatch inexplicitly turned to two unknowledgeable right-wing Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University faculty members. They purport to study university presidents’ “contracts,” an odd field with no criteria or standards.

American football has always been a blood sport.

It needs to change or die.

Tackle must end.  Flags must come.

And they will.

Why?  Because human lives are at stake…and with them, a trillion-dollar industry.

A century ago, football players were maimed and died in droves.  The college game was a cross between rugby, mixed martial arts and all-out trench warfare.

Merciless scrums brought on bloody body piles in which players did their very best to gouge and permanently harm their opponents.  Often they succeeded.

Where helmets were worn, they were virtually useless leather gloves, perhaps functional in keeping cracked skulls from falling apart during a game, but that was about it.  The death toll for a given year of the college game was substantial and undeniable.  Long-term post-season repercussions were undiscussed, unstudied…and permanent.

Early in the twentieth century, both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson intervened.  By the time the pro game caught hold after World War 2, hard helmets, shoulder pads, body cushioning and tightened rules significantly lowered the kill ratio.

2023 allows all to decide the future. We defeated Covid, inflation, and attempts at inducing fascism from inflation.

I'm still amazed at the year Columbus, Ohio ended up with, while turbulence existed after our nation decided a higher existence should come from evolving past these things.

2022 Columbus reminded itself of importance as an incubator of things everyone loves…

For example:

2022 year ended with the biggest concert I’ve ever witnessed in Columbus, Ohio.

Joe Walsh’s 6th Annual Vets Aide Concert sold-out Nationwide Arena November 13, 2022. Vets Aide featured an All-Ohio Line-Up.

I saw Walsh reunite the James Gang with special guest Dave Grohl, Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Breeders and the OSU Marching Band - “The Best Damn Band in the Land.”

After visiting flat atolls of the Tuamotus and then a day out at sea, the appearance on the horizon of the Gambier group, with its high islands, emerges as a sharp vertical contract to the previous days’ horizontal vistas. This remote chain of mostly volcanic isles, located 1,000 miles southeast of Tahiti, is one of French Polynesia’s five archipelagoes that comprise a sprawling watery realm the size of Western Europe, and I’ve never been here before.

What is democracy but platitudes and dog whistles? The national direction is quietly predetermined — it’s not up for debate. The president’s role is to sell it to the public; you might say he’s the public-relations director in chief:

“. . . my Administration will seize this decisive decade to advance America’s vital interests, position the United States to outmaneuver our geopolitical competitors, tackle shared challenges, and set our world firmly on a path toward a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. . . . We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision for a world that is free, open, prosperous, and secure.”

These are the words of President Biden, in his introduction to the National Security Strategy, which lays out America’s geopolitical plans for the coming decade. Sounds almost plausible, until you ponder the stuff that isn’t up for public discussion, such as, for instance: