A Lighter View
Kicking off a new year
By K.E.H. Stagg

January 6 , 2011

____Wouldn’t it be great if life were like college bowl games? To qualify for participation, teams only have to win six—half!—of their season’s scheduled football games. That’s like saying, “In order to get a scholarship, you must score 50 on every test.” Well, duh! I’m in!
____Because of these extremely undemanding requirements, pretty much every team in the Big Ten, the PAC Ten, and the Hang Ten gets to go to a bowl game. Not only do we have the well-known Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Hula Bowls, but we also have a plethora of lesser bowls, known only to those whose team is playing: GoDaddy.com Bowl, Beef O’Brady’s Bowl, and the New Era Pinstripe Bowl being classic examples.
____I’m still floored that teams qualify for participation by winning only half of their games. I know that winning a football game isn’t easy, but compare the significance of winning a college game to, say, balancing a corporate budget. Imagine qualifying for a bank loan if you pay just half of your bills. ____Come to think of it, based on bowl standards, I should be able to ask my boss for a promotion when I’ve worked only half a year. Or when I’ve worked a full year, but only completed half my work assignments.
____Think what would happen if even half of America adopted bowl standards. Forget “committed to excellence”—whatever that means. Companies could advertise themselves as being “committed to half measures”. ____Almost every logo, letterhead, and company brochure would need to be rewritten. Motivational speeches and seminars would no longer advocate reaching a specific destination; they’d just recommend getting halfway there. The possibilities are endless!
____Balance half the national deficit. Win half the war against terrorism. Grant immunity to half of illegal immigrants. Educate half the country. Give a half refund to taxpayers. Win the lottery by guessing half of the correct numbers. It all sounds half-baked to me!
____If we want a half-witted society, by all means, let’s adopt bowl standards. But if we want fully functional citizens in Dillsburg and elsewhere, let’s aspire to more than half-hearted achievement. It’s not a half-bad idea for bowl commissioners to re-work their criteria in order to set a realistic tone for the athletes’ futures; half-price tickets to any slacker’s bowl would ensure full compliance.
____Once the bar for qualification is raised above a half-empty glass, bowl games may halt their current slide into diminshing worth. In fact, they might just regain full value. Wouldn’t that be something?!