(From Something Positive. As Websnark might have said once upon a time, click on the image for full-sized heathen Davan with a point.)

I am an evangelical. Davan is loosely deist; certainly not anything resembling a Christian anymore (although, as I've mentioned before, Davan does have a history with '80s and '90s evangelical craziness). I should not identify with Davan's pain here as much as I do.

But I do. Oh, how I do.

Hrm, the snarks embedded within the past two posts have a little subtext, don't they? I may have to expand on that in days to come.

...he of Kamp Krusty blog fame, on his radio show going national.

And here's what's really exciting me: Brant currently plies his radio trade for South Florida's WAY-FM affiliate. It is natural to assume that it's the national stations carrying WAY-FM programming that are the likely recipients of Brant's syndicated goodness.

Including 90.3 FM in Rome, GA.

W00t.

By the way, Brant also wins "Quote of the Week" honors:

For most people, "Christian radio" isn't on the radar. And, for most people who read this blog, "Christian radio" has an approval rating right up there with, say, polio.

But it's what I do, and I'm thankful for that. I get to annoy, cajole, prod, anger, and -- mostly -- confuse people on a daily basis. Best of all, I'm talking to a lot of Good Churchgoing Folk, so I get to talk about the Kingdom of God to an unreached people group.

How true.

(From my Israel journal, 13 March 2008.

I'm typing this in completely unedited. I wrote it in a mode of complete desperation. To be completely honest with you, I've been almost deliberately avoiding re-reading this. I don't know how to deal with this place. I may not know how to deal with this place ever. But I know I have to deal with this place.)

I still don't know how I write about what I saw in Jericho.

First, the checkpoint. The space between the Israeli check and the Palestinian check is a half mile of straight wasteland. Once you reach Jericho, you are...

...it's poverty. I have never known how to deal with poverty. But it's not just poverty, because if it was, we could propose solutions, and establish order. And we try. You see signs for the Palestinian authority, for the UN, for the European Union, even the good ol' U-S-of-A, supporting this or that public works project (your foreign aid dollars at work!). But does that even matter if Israel won't allow industry to grow?

The major industry in Jericho is tourism. The city's major landmark now is the Intercontinental Hotel that rises over the horizon, presumably for someone to come in and stay and see the sights. (The parking lot is not full.) There are random shops, residences with barren gardens...and I can't think of anything to complete that list. (I remember seeing the office door of a dentist. It was gated and locked.)

There are hopeful signs of life - the Catholic school, with children pouring out. Many children had parents waiting on them patiently, seeming to know that this was their hope. But Palestinians have been among the best-educated of the Arab peoples since the early 1900's. Without the opportunity, what then?

We stopped at what was proposed to be the tree that Zacchaeus climbed when Jesus visited Jericho. What appeared to be a Palestinian family, the older men wearing "VENDOR" tags (approved by the Palestinian authority), with young boys in tow, came out of a small building in back, selling souvenirs. You're always told to beware of children in this type of situation - have they been trained to be pickpockets? - but what do you do if you know that's all this family might have to depend on?

(I retreated back to the bus quietly. Afraid? Me? You think?)

As to what happened next, Robert Wallace can tell the story better than I can.

(My writing ends here. However, Robert Wallace has taken to keeping his own blog, and at this point, I can quote him.)

In Jericho, several Palestinians said to each of us, "Please tell the people of America we want peace. Please don't let a few radicals make them think we are all like that." One man whose words will stay with me for a long time said, "How many fingers do you have?" I replied, "Five." Showing me his hand, he said, "Same as me. Please tell them we want peace. We need peace."

(Permalink...and THAT happened.)

For those of you who are true geeks, you might recognize that as the Tokyo series between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A's. Some dork - who sounds like he knows baseball better than he lets on, if you listen closely - scored nice seats behind home plate, and provides sufficiently dorky commentary.

"I'm not sure what that means!" I don't know if I've ever heard baseball commentary so beautiful in my life.

Oh, by the way, apparently the guy is a pretty decent guitarist.

(I have to confess, I find it cool when famous people do vaguely anonymous stuff online.)

It is absolutely essential for me, in times like these, to remember how good I have it.

After an up-and-down week, where I still can't find a way to make the highs anywhere near as high as the lows, my random bouncing around the internets brought me to desperately needed perspective, in the form of two stories from Bunker Hill Community College written by Wick Sloane.

The first, written last year this time, is a piece mourning the death of a 19-year-old student named Cedirick Steele and how this impacted the English class he had been taking. The second, written today, is a broader picture of the experience at BHCC, captured in single snapshots, nothing terribly coherent because "these pages keep spinning out in rage and gibberish. I can’t circle longer, looking for the perfect storyline on this problem 'too big to be seen.'"

Here's the part of the second piece that absolutely killed me (edited so that Baptist-college-stylee SonicWall doesn't start hating my guts - go back to InsideHigherEd for the unedited version):

Slide Five: A Thursday last spring. A textbook publisher has brought lunch for two students whose essays she wants to buy for a new book. On Tuesday, one student had e-mailed his lunch order. Thursday morning, he canceled. He had to quit school. No explanation.

Slide Six: The final paragraph of his essay.

"My stomach begins to churn as I start the last phase of my pilgrimage. The last phase consists of walking out of the train station, down the walkway and into BHCC. I compare this walk to the walk death row inmates take before they are executed. As I take this walk I begin to ask myself, “What the f___ am I doing here?” Within seconds my sensible half answers, “You’re here so that you don’t have to live like the rest of your family. The rest of your friends are in school, and lord knows half of them aren’t half as smart as you. Lastly, we already paid for this s___ so get it done, lil’ n___a.” With BHCC right in front me, I take a deep breath and end this pilgrimage by entering the Mecca that will start me on the path of reaching my pinnacle.”

Why is it that the people who need education the most desperately - and who know it, and are hungriest for it - are the very same people who find it the hardest to get?

(And, of course, this is "first in a series." I'll be reading this some more.)

We interrupt the steady stream of Israel-blogging to bring a reminder of the real world, via Part VI of Cornford's Microcosmographia Academica (last making appearances in this place here and here):

You will begin, I suppose, by thinking that people who disagree with you and oppress you must be dishonest. Cynicism is the besetting and venial fault of declining youth, and disillusionment its last illusion. It is quite a mistake to suppose that real dishonesty is at an common. The number of rogues is about equal to the number of men who act honestly; and it is very small. The great majority would sooner behave honestly than not. The reason why they do not give way to this natural preference of humanity is that they are afraid that others will not; and the others do not because they are afraid that they will not. Thus it comes about that, while behaviour which looks dishonest is fairly common, sincere dishonesty is about as rare as the courage to evoke good faith in your neighbours by showing that you trust them.

No; the Political Motive in the academic breast is honest enough. It is Fear -- genuine, perpetual, heartfelt timorousness.

Never chalk up to malicious intent what can be just as easily ascribed to raw, unadulterated scaredy-pantsness?

There is a lot of truth in that. A whole heapin' lot.

(From my Israel journal, started on 12 March, completed on 14 March.)

I get separated from my group at Banias, past the plausible site of Caesarea Phillipi, walking out towards the waterfalls.

The agents of separation are high school kids.

School kids in Israel appear to travel a lot - and appear to travel well, since tour buses here are so readily available. (Top industry in Israel? Tourism. I don't think there's a close second.) At any of the national parks, it's not uncommon to find several school groups wandering around. On this day, it's groups of early teenagers - girls preening and posing for digital pictures as if they're supermodels, boys playfighting with each other as if they're WWE wrestlers, exasperated teachers and parents trying to maintain a semblance of order.

In other words, not that much different from American school kids.

Except for this - every group we saw, we saw one or two - not appearing much older than school age, if they're older at all - carrying rifles, slung over their shoulders, very visible.

A couple of remarks between us American travelers, when we first saw them, were about how much these guys looked like kids playing soldier. Honestly, I hope you'd forgive me for that. There was no way either of those guys was a day over 19, not even with the beard that one of them was sporting.

But now I'm separated from my guys, and I find myself behind this group of high school kids, and I wind up walking aside these two rifle guys, and we exchange pleasantries. The bearded guy asks, "Where are you from?" "Northern Georgia, in the United States. Do you know where Atlanta is?" He does, but he's never heard of Rome. We get some doses of each others' geography.

I find out that the bearded guy, the guy who's most eager to talk to the Georgia redneck, is named Odi. His job is to provide security for the school kids. Every school group has to have security provided for them when they're out. It really doesn't take much imagination to see why.

Now, I do a lousy job of putting on airs. I don't know if it was politic or not to tell Odi what we thought he was when we first saw him - just a school kid that's too eager to join the military. But when I say this to Odi, it's clear that he doesn't think I was out of line at all. He just laughs. "I am eager to join the military!"

"Well, doesn't everybody have to serve in the military in Israel?"

"Yes, but that does not matter. Everybody wants to serve. See, America is a wonderful country. Everybody wants to serve in the American military, no?"

Oh, wow, that line of questioning blindsided me. I stammer something like "well, you might think so, but these are strange times." All I can think in my head is this: Now is probably not the time to bring up Iraq..

Odi looks at me strangely. "I don't understand. American military pays well, no?"

"Well, yes, but..." but I suddenly realize that Odi's not listening to me. "The Israeli military pays only 700 sheqels a month. But that does not matter. Israel is a wonderful country - but we cannot know what might happen tomorrow. We have to be ready. I want to be ready."

Odi is stiffening, standing straighter, as he talks. He is talking passionately. When he looks at me, I see only one thing in his eyes:

I love Israel, and no one will take Israel away from me.

I say a few things about how admirable his passion is, and how sometimes I wish we felt as strongly about America as he feels about Israel. But at this point his group is stopping, and I have no clue how much farther my group is ahead, and I'm conscious of the fact that I don't want to get lost in a strange land, so I say my goodbyes.

As the week has gone on, and as we've seen the military gather this place or that, the one thing that stuns me is how often the soldiers are having fun, how often there are smiles on the soldier's faces. There are sometimes serious looks, in the stressful places, but never weary or fatigued looks, and only rarely is there a flash of anger. It seems this is a military that genuinely enjoys serving and longs to serve. I may not know much about war, but I do expect it's much harder to defeat an army that wants to serve than an army that doesn't.

Tel Aviv doesn't care.

Yeah, there were people shot and killed by Muslim extremists in a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem on Tuesday. So? Yeah, conditions in Gaza are worse today than they were in the 1960's. What's that have to do with me? Yeah, we have a conflict between Arab and Jew that goes on and on and on, maybe since the beginning of time, definitely for the last century.

Tel Aviv says this: "Look, you and I aren't going to solve these problems today. Today, we party."

The saying in Israel, I was told before arriving here, goes: "You go to Haifa to work, to Jerusalem to pray, to Tel Aviv to play." I chuckled at the idea before I touched down in Israel. I finished the day feeling like, for the first time in my life, I'd been on Spring Break. It was all there - the beach, the youth hard at play, way too little clothing for the coast in March, the cramped housing and hotels on the coastline - why ISN'T that the Florida Gulf Coast? The fact that it's the western coast of Israel on shabbat is of no consequence. I feel no more threatened here than I would in Panama City. Honestly, I feel less threatened.

Leave the beach, go into the city, not much changes. The streets are packed - far more packed than you'd expect for the Sabbath. Only everyone's headed to the parks and public places, so deliberately you begin to wonder if they're just cruising. Picnics and cookouts abound. Games are everywhere. Even as the plane touches down, deafeningly close to the taxiway - football! Goals are being scored, with NARY A NET TO THE GOAL. RIGHT NEXT TO THE TAXIWAY. You wonder how loud the laughter will be if the ball rolls into the runway.

There's soccer everywhere. Basketball hoops. Volleyball nets. For crying out loud, teenagers on roller skates. Four wheels in blocks, not the inline kind; I'm talking the kind that went out of style in 1979 and that my daughter wouldn't be caught dead in. But just fine for Tel Aviv.

And then tennis. And paddleball. And more tennis. And more paddleball. And still more tennis. And paddleball EVERYWHERE.

The Israelis have a name for it that I never learned; for our purposes, let's just call it "paddleball" and be done with it. When you arrive at the beach, it's the first sound you hear. Close to the buildings, to the beachfront shops, you find the people who take it most seriously, but even they show no evidence of playing formal games - they just hit the ball back and forth, with forceful abandon, as if they're playing ping-pong over ten times the space with no table, oversized paddles and where the point is only lost if you're the one who allows the ball to hit the ground. The games are energetic, passsionate, and seemingly endless.

On the beach, more casual games. Some between boyfriend and girlfriend, gently lobbing the ball to and fro. Some between brothers, showing off for one another (and attractive female passersby) in typical brotherly fashion. Some between random acquaintances, maybe even strangers, volleying back and forth at first, but now swinging their shots towards one another with brute force. One or two clearly could play with the serious athletes on the pavement, but they choose to be on the beach - more accessible to their friends, maybe to the opposite sex, maybe to the bongs that seem to start popping up as the day gets later - some emitting tobacco smoke, some other grasses of the land, and some...well, you just wonder about their content...

And this is JUST the beach. This is JUST the paddleball. Tennis is, of course, the more respectable game, better organized and properly competitive. So the tennis courts are everywhere as well, and the games show that same range of activity - from husband and wife simply knocking a ball back and forth to fit competitors desperately wanting to win the game.

Our first site visit in Israel was to an old Philistine city, Tel Qasile, under the auspices of the Eretz Israel Museum. The archaeological site sits on a hill. It's been restored somewhat, but has fallen into disrepair in turn - "it's a ruin of the restoration of a ruin". All the while, while we're at this poorly kept site, you can look off the hill at the well-kept courts and see the tennis games go on.

It's only as I get away from Tel Aviv that I begin to really feel like I'm in another land, and it's only as I am within site of the Sea of Galilee that it really starts to hit that I'm truly approaching hold ground. Tel Aviv may just be more Americanized than anything in Ontario. As relatively young as the city is, it stands to reason. But it's still at once comforting and sad.

Not that Tel Aviv cares.

After all, there are still games to be played.

How's that for surreal sentences? Hey, let me keep it going: "I stayed in a hotel with a view of the Sea of Galilee this week." "I studied at the ruins of Dan this week." "I walked on the 1st-century street outside the Temple walls this week." "We had Palm Sunday worship on the Mount of Olives this week."

Compared to that, "I rode a camel this week" sounds positively mundane.

We come home tonight (well, Monday night, since I'm typing this late Sunday night Eastern time...I just woke up over here). I kind of purposely haven't live-blogged the trip, because I didn't know what my time on a computer would be like. As it turned out, there were three days where I had quite restricted access, and two days where we had no access at all. So I've scribbled stuff in a notebook when I've been able to, and when my brain hasn't been so overwhelmed and overfull that I just mentally shut down (which has felt like pretty much all of our time in Jerusalem and surrounding environs).

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I'll type up some of what I've scribbled down and post it here.

This is an amazing country, a diverse country, a historic country, a spiritual country, a tragic country. I will never be the same again for having been here. But the ways I have changed, I could not have even remotely predicted a week ago.

Stay tuned. I have a story to tell.

I hit a strange point in my Christian life very early on, when I started going to a Vineyard church in graduate school. Every young Christian believes that we've going to grow up in the faith forever, and that getting to know God is going to be absolutely wonderful all the time, and is completely mystified when he begins to run into roadblocks and starts to struggle to find people going through the same thing as him, and starts to gradually but surely feel alone - without even God beside him.

And obviously, when I say "he" I really mean "me."

Many people who know me also know that this was also the time my Usenet geekdom was at its peak; several people know me BECAUSE this was the time of my life when my Usenet geekdom was at its peak. And going through some really sweet stuff over the past month brought back to mind an old rec.music.christian thread about worship music - and the exchange between me and a guy named Michael Straight.

My complaint in that thread boiled down to this:

my question, to all the praise and worship types, and to vineyard types in particular, is this: what is the purpose, the vision, or whatever, of those who write vineyard worship music? obviously, the ultimate purpose is to provide songs to worship the Lord with. but a lot of the songs elicit personal responses...to pick examples that i'm familiar with, "light the fire" really doesn't strike me as a worship song at all, but a prayer. (in my mind, at least, there is a SIGNIFICANT difference.) the chorus of "his banner over me" has a line about "we can feel the love of God in this place" (that may not be quite right) which, i feel, is lying to God if you don't feel the love of God in that place. stuff like that. what's the point of putting lines reflecting human emotions that one may or may not feel into a worship song that's supposed to glorify God?

i realize those who write worship songs for the vineyard aren't the only people guilty of this, but vineyard songs are the ones that strike me as having this characteristic most often.

I'm not a Vinyard member, but I went to one of their kinship groups in college and really enjoyed their music. I guess that one could take the attitude that "if I'm not glad to be singing, it's hypocracy to sing a song that says I am" or whatever the emotion is that the song in question talks about. But I always kind of took those songs as a reminder that, no matter how down I might be about life, at rock bottom I do have something to be happy about and it's not hypocracy to be legitimately upset at the bad things happening in my life but also taking some time to celebrate and be happy about what God has done.

Its sort of like my attitude about communion. Someone who comes from a tradition that takes communion infrequently asked me once if I refrain from taking communion some Sundays when my heart isn't right (refering to Paul's admonition in 1Corinthians). I told her that, yes I have refrained once or twice, but I usually see communion as a time to get right with God, not something I can only participate in after I've gotten my life together.

The same goes for worship. There's an old hymn with the line "You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices." If you're not happy, if you're not feeling good about God's love, it's worth some effort to try to be happy and feel good about these things. Sorrow and pain are legitimate emotions to bring to God, but I think sometimes it's good to make an effort to realize and be glad about who God is and what he's done for us.

All that is to say that, for me, I took those songs as expressing what I ought to feel, what I'd like to feel, and what I frequently did feel when I let myself think about who God is and how much I owe him and how it's just right to get excited about him, no matter what's going on in my life.

I honestly wanted to rip Michael to shreds for that post, because I didn't like the idea of pretending to be happy when everybody around me was pretending to be happy and all you fakes can just go away now because I'm the guy here who has the REAL problems and the REAL struggles and there's no way you can tell me that what I'm going through doesn't deserve a hearing...

...but as I read and re-read Michael's words, I began to see that he wasn't talking about any of that. He point-blank said that "sorrow and pain are legitimate emotions to bring to God", but he was proposing something else as well - that it wasn't right to DELIBERATELY CHOOSE to remain in those emotions. God is worthy to be praised. God is worthy to be glorified. God is worthy to have me get over my own stupid self if my own stupid self is getting in the way of him doing his thing.

If you don't feel the words "we can feel the love of God in this place", then SEEK to feel them. God's love is worth it.

There is a lot I've had to be angry about as 2007 has turned into 2008. Instead of deliberately running away from God, though, as I really was trying to do in my younger self, I have begun to seek out God's love in less obvious places, in people I wouldn't ordinarily be in contact with, and focus on God instead of my anger. One of those less obvious places turns into worship with astonishing regularity these days, and it's really sweet.

And we sang a song on Friday night that I haven't been able to stop singing all day.

And - wouldn't you know it - it's a Vineyard song. And it's one that plays more like a prayer than as a worship song - not that the difference is that big of a deal anyway.

It's 14 years late - but thanks, Michael, for bringing the word. I still hear it, and I still need to hear it.

(Permalink for - shock, horror! - a worship video.)

Brant Hansen has had a couple of really thought-provoking posts lately on a guy who simultaneously claims to be Muslim and Christ-following. Yes, please, by all means read them. But that's not what's important.

What's important is what Brant immediately buried in the comments in response to the first couple of comments back on the latter post (the 21st century version of "burying the lead"). It is something I have heard several times before, but it broke my brain all over again.

This is what's important:

So, this guy walks up to Jesus (stop me if you know this one) and says, "What do I have to do to live forever?"

Jesus says, basically, "Well, what do you think? What's the law say?"

And the guy answers definitively. And Jesus says, "THAT'S IT! You got it. Do that, and you will live."

Ask this question to 100 American evangelicals, and *maybe* one will know the answer. I know this, because I've asked. (It's not the "rich young ruler" story, BTW.)

Curious, isn't it? You'd think everything would ride on that, kids would memorize it, and it would be put to music 15,000 times. But...no.

And this is what breaks my brain even more:

You've read that scripture. Pretty much all of you, if you're reading this post, you know that story full well. But Brant's right. When we're approached needing to know what we need to do to get to this place that we've taken to calling "heaven", we make our answers a WHALE of a lot more complicated than Jesus did.

It's so tempting to call this a game, and see if you can answer the question right, and prove yourself to be the one of the one hundred. But, then again, if you haven't read it lately, you really ought to go read the parable of the Good Samaritan - and the story surrounding it. Because "going and doing likewise" is much more important. For all of us.

With many thanks to that master of mischief, Randy Milholland:

instructions:
1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your first album.

So I did. My article, my (highly rock and roll) quote, and my album cover.

Put it all together - what do you get?

And here, I always thought my band name was going to be Endangered Species. Well, phooey. For good or for ill, I'm apparently going to be the frontman for another ironic indie pop troupe. Hope you like my stuff.

Thank you. I simply had to say that. I feel better now.

(Corollary: Please, for the love of God, Republicans, do not nominate Mitt Romney.)

This is just kinda submitted with minimal comment. This SI.com feature on Rick Majerus is big-media journalism at its finest - the type of profiling of a guy that SportsCenter simply will not give you, the warts-and-all treatment, face-to-face with who the guy is - and wonderfully descriptive writing to boot. Most sports geeks hate a guy like Bobby Knight and love a guy like Rick Majerus, because Knight comes across as such an S.O.B. to the media and Majerus never met a media guy he couldn't crack up with a story. Yet you read this thing and you could easily imagine Knight pulling off some of the stunts and cussing out his players like Majerus is described as doing here - and then there's Majerus' habit of exposing himself and making people around him feel awkward, far beyond anything Knight would do, which doesn't tend to keep people in modern academia employed for very long but coaches with track records of success can pull off.

But the raw shock value doesn't make the piece. The picture of the coach who simply lives and breathes basketball, who is a wonderful human being but for the sport that he loves that brings out all of his demons. S.L. Price, who wrote the piece, avoids the temptation to address Majerus' foibles with mock shock and horror - he uses them to construct a full picture of the man, hand in hand with all the positives, placing what makes him truly great side-by-side with what makes him so troubling.

The piece is seven pages long. Read them all. They set up this ending, which is devastating by itself, but literally had me shaking as I read it as the profile's conclusion:

Something about pain: Rick Majerus prizes his. Because pain teaches you. Because pain is the price of chasing one's passion, and if you don't do that, you're not alive. Because, ideally, losses like tonight's 22-point thrashing at Boston College show how limited your immediate future is, and that kind of clarity can only help. Majerus inherited this Saint Louis team. Few doubt he can put the program in the national picture, but he figures on a three-year struggle, and who knows how long his body will hold up? He's got a team, but for now it feels nothing like Utah.

"I realize the position I'm in here now: These guys didn't pick me; I didn't pick them," Majerus says after the Dec. 4 game. "We're in each other's worlds, and we're looking at each other, like...." He shrugs. "It is what it is. I like these kids, they're really nice kids. I would like any one of them as a son."

That only sounds dismissive. Majerus knows basketball cost him a marriage, kids. More than once he investigated adopting a child alone and allowed himself to be talked out of it. But the boys he never had and raised are never far from his mind. The boosters saw that in the bar back in October, when, apropos of nothing, he dropped into a public reverie, his voice gone mournful and soft. "I wish I could've had a kid like Dwayne Polk or Luke Meyer," he said of two of his seniors. "I don't have any regrets other than that. I look at Luke and think, Boy, his parents must feel so special to have that kind of a kid."

That sparked a tangent about parents today, and how they "want to take all the pain, all the heartache and all the sadness out of their kids' lives. All the things that make you a better person, a better coach, a better teacher -- all the things that are so much the fabric of life. I'm so much better for every loss I've had. I can...."

Majerus paused, and everyone in the place leaned forward in his seat. It was pin-drop quiet. When he spoke again his eyes had filled with tears, and the words came out slowly; suddenly it was 1998, March 30, and Doleac and Miller and Alex Jensen were beating Kentucky in the NCAA final, up by 12 early in the second half. No one had expected them to even get there. No one had expected Utah to beat Arkansas, Arizona and North Carolina -- all those traditional powers -- and now Majerus saw Kentucky, too, in his grasp. Then came Utah's collapse, his overmatched players finally run down and beaten 78-69, the whole awful film of it unspooling again in his head.

"I don't know how to tell you this," Majerus rasped. "I don't think I can get you guys there; I probably can't, because it's so tough to get to the Final Four. But, you know, I was just a bad player; any walk-on with me now is much better than I ever was. But I always loved to play, and I knew how to get my way in: I'd find all those guys who were good shooters and set picks for them and I'd go on the floor for loose balls. [At Utah] I had such great kids. I love those kids. They played their asses off, and we got to the national championship game; I can remember every moment of that game. You become so much better a person for all the bad things that happen to you. But all these helicopter parents, they just hover there, and they want to take all that away from their kids. They don't want them to fight through it."

And at that moment it became clear: the task Majerus set for himself long ago. It's not just the searing losses that will teach his players. It's him too: dealing out the hard knocks and heartbreak that he felt once. If parents won't do it? Majerus will be the pain their kids fight through every day. Some may understand. He's almost past caring. Majerus will walk that long tunnel to the locker room alone, head down, two people indeed. There goes the happy coach, back in his element. There goes the saddest man you ever saw.