Morehouse College and Xavier University featured on Capital One's College Bowl on NBC
The Hump-Day Hot Topics!
College Bowl Returns
For all of my readers who love Jeopardy! and all things trivia, I encourage you to watch the Capital One College Bowl, hosted by NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning and his brother Cooper Manning, each Tuesday night at 10p.m. on NBC. The new show features twelve colleges from across America including the Manning Brothers alma maters, the University of Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively, all vying for one million dollars in prize money.
College Bowl, founded by Don Reid, started on NBC radio in 1953-1955 as College Quiz Bowl. It then shifted to TV as GE College Bowl 1959-1962 on CBS, and from 1962-1970, on NBC TV. In its original form, the game pitted two collegiate teams in a rapid paced contest to answer questions in multiple subjects. This format soon filtered to the high school and middle school ranks and has been called everything from "Knowledge Bowl" to "Brain Brawl," among others, as it gained popularity. What makes the game super intriguing is that like Jeopardy!, most of these formats do not give the questions or answers in advance, so the best players are those who are well rounded and endowed with lightning fast recall ability.
In 1989, College Bowl, then led by Richard Reid, joined forces with American Honda Motors to create the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge or HCASC, one that pits America's HBCU’s against each other each year for millions of dollars in grants. Now, after playing “Brain Bowl” in middle and high school in Tallahassee, I was blessed to play HCASC for four years; three at Morehouse College and one as a graduate student at Florida A&M University (FAMU), the latter of which was coached then (and now) by mother, Dr. Vivian Hobbs.
In the 32 years since HCASC was founded, FAMU has won a program leading eight national championships and Morehouse has won four (second most), thus my excitement to learn that "Da 'House" would be one of two HBCUs (joining Xavier University) in the new College Bowl series!
Last night, the young Men of Morehouse played against Columbia University and while they jumped out to a huge lead in the first three periods, victory would not be theirs as the Columbia Lions roared back to advance to the next round with a final score of 635-525. Still, with commercial shots of noted Morehouse alumni Spike Lee and Samuel Jackson filling the air, co-host Cooper Manning asked the young Brothers about the "Morehouse Mystique," which prompted a joint recitation of the "Five Wells" as espoused by President Emeritus Robert Franklin that Morehouse Men are:
-Well dressed
-Well spoken
-Well read
-Well traveled
-Well balanced
Indeed!
More crucially, Morehouse Men worldwide are extremely proud of Brothers Tray Davis, Jalen Curry and Stephen Agyepong for their noble efforts expended in a worthy cause! Here's hoping that both the new College Bowl (and HCASC) take off ratings wise in a way that will remind that academic pursuits are just as exciting—and profitable—as sporting pursuits!
Eviction moratorium extended
In true Dickensian form, the Coronavirus Pandemic has caused "the best of times, and the worst of times" for people across the globe—and most certainly here in America. "Best" in regards to the resilience of the human spirit and the resourcefulness that many of us have been compelled to exhibit due to the changing circumstances of how we live, play, and work. "Worst" in regards to the catastrophic death tolls—and the wanton selfishness that some humans have displayed in everything from mask wearing and social distancing to placing the pursuit of profit over the welfare of the people.
Last year, to stave off homelessness and a run on shelters where folks could congregate and potentially spread the Coronavirus, the CDC recommended (and many states adopted) measures to prevent evictions and foreclosures. Well, with the number of deaths lessening (at least for now) due to vaccinations, landlords across America are trying to collect past due rent—or eject tenants in arrears.
Several associations of landlords/realtors filed suit earlier this year to end the moratorium, and with the CDC indicating its own plan to lift the ban on July 31st, yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision to allow the moratorium to remain in place. Two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, joined liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer in keeping the moratorium intact for another month.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett all voted in favor of immediately lifting the ban.
What is fascinating thus far is watching how Roberts (and to an extent Kavanaugh) are becoming swing votes that are willing to side with liberals on some core issues—a factor that reminds that predicting how a lifetime appointed justice will vote is quite difficult. Separately, with the dreaded Delta variant of the Coronavirus heading towards America soon, I cannot help but wonder what will happen if the infection rates and death tolls get out of hand again? Will the business world's push for profits overrule regulatory measures to stave off the disease?
Stay tuned...
South Dakota governor's private army
If you follow me on Facebook, then you know that I am a huge fan of the hit HBO series "Game of Thrones," one based on a series of fantasy book written by George R.R. Martin. For those unfamiliar, GOT is set in a fictional world that resembles medieval Europe, one in which wealthy families and feudal lords are conniving and fighting it out to sit on the "Iron Throne" in the fictional Westeros Capital City of King's Landing.
The wealthiest of these feudal lords command private armies that are more loyal to the holdfast banners than to any central government, and I couldn't help but think of House Lannister, House Stark, and House Targaeryan this morning when I read that South Dakota's Republican Governor Kristi Noem is sending privately funded National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border at the behest of her friend and fellow Republican, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you in reading that a Republican governor...is sending troops funded by a wealthy Republican donor...to a state led by a Republican governor!
While the legality of this move is fecund for debate, what is not debatable is that this could set a bad precedent that in time, could devolve into that second civil war that so many on the extreme right seem to fiend for—with little to no fear of conflagration coming from an extreme left that is figuratively screaming "Bring it on!"
I believe that Mandy Smithberger, a defense expert at the Project on Government Oversight, sums it best: “You certainly don’t want our national security priorities up to the highest bidder."
No, we do not! But if Gov. Noem's simplistic act goes unchallenged, such is precisely where America could be heading in the very near future.
More critique of the Critical Race critics
As conservatives continue to wage war on "Critical Race Theory," one that most of them could not explain to you coherently if a chance to win one million dollars was on the line like the Capital One College Bowl, I figure that now is as good a time as any to post a chart that is a fact based primer as to what CRT really is—not what conservative pundits and "Know Nothings" deem it to be. I am also reposting a Facebook piece of mine from earlier this week that highlights what the real issue is in America, which is that certain folks want to hide the truth about America's legacy of white supremacy and racism by telling half-truths—or whole lies!
My Facebook post:
“Half-History—Jesse Owens won four gold medals for the United States at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and by so doing, debunked German Dictator Adolf Hitler's Aryan supremacy, 'Master Race,' theory...
Whole-History—Jesse Owens also returned with those four medals to a United States that was steeped in Jim Crow traditions of white supremacy, so much so that he received no congratulatory call from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was not invited to the White House with the white Olympians, and even had to use the servant's elevator to attend a celebration in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City...
Tell the whole truth--and shame the history hiding devil...”
The CRT primer
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