Be grateful for all things on Thanksgiving
Published 10:41 pm Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thanksgiving is the best of holidays. No gifts. No tree (except in the stores since the day after Halloween). No songs. Just the simple act of giving thanks for all of the blessings in your life.
One of the best scenes from the Dustin Hoffman classic, “Little Big Man,” came when his adopted grandfather, Old Lodge Skins, played by Chief Dan George, is waiting to die and thanks the Great Spirit for everything.
Yes, everything. The good and the bad.
“Thank you for helpin’ me to become a warrior! Thank you for my victories and for my defeats! Thank you for my vision, and the blindness in which I saw further!”
Old Lodge Skins was blinded, lost his sons in wars with the U.S. and was watching the Cheyenne people disappear, but yet, he still was thankful.
That’s the attitude we should all have this day.
We can all give thanks for the Bowl Championship Series, with its never-ending attempts to solve the myriad problems that sprout up from using computers rather than a playoff system to determine a national champion.
It isn’t perfect, but it gives us something to talk about.
Ole Miss fans, give thanks for the Rebels’ awful implosion. Yes, you read that sentence right. If the Rebels hadn’t disintergrated like cardboard shoes on a rainy day, Houston Nutt might still be limping along as the Ole Miss coach with no upside and a berth in the Who-Gives-A-Rip.com Bowl. While paying him $5 million not to coach over the next few years isn’t exactly good money management, if the Rebels find the right guy to replace him, it will have been money well spent.
But if they don’t find the right guy, Rebel fans will still win the party in the Grove and not much else.
We can be thankful for the NBA and its labor dispute. Otherwise, our nights on TNT and TBS and ESPN and ABC would be besmirched with bad basketball from overhyped stars who play for entertainment in the way-too-long regular season and don’t turn it on until the playoffs. It’s just a shame that all of those whose jobs are dependent on the NBA — the security guards, concessions folks and locker room staff — are unemployed because billionaires and millionaires can’t figure out how to divy up a shrinking revenue pie.
We can be thankful that the days of plodding, 13-10 slugfests in the NFL are largely by the wayside for good teams, thanks to rules that give all of the advantages to quarterbacks and wide receivers and none to defensive backs. With the exception of Revis Island, life as a cornerback in the NFL is an endless procession of getting toasted or stopping the toasting and drawing a penalty flag. This overemphasis on the pass has made the highly-paid NFL tailback an endangered species.
But seriously, there are plenty of things to be thankful for this holiday. Our families. Our armed forces, defending our nation and our interests around the globe. And living in the greatest country on the Earth, recession or no recession.
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Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. You can follow him on Twitter at vpsportseditor. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com.