Josh Benner

Category: Sports

  • Urban Meyer keeps job, but is it worth the cost?

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    Photo courtesy of Wikimedia commons

    I’ve gone back and forth on the Urban Meyer story. When I initially heard about it, I thought it was blown out of proportion but studied it in greater detail and thought it would result in Meyer’s termination. But I continued to dig and more information came out and I started to think that Meyer did what he should have done. This was always a very complicated story. I was always curious to hear results of the investigation and report. I defended him as the investigation continued.

    But in the first full day after the report, after the suspension, part of me questions if he should have been dismissed.
    The standard line I’ve heard from Buckeye fans who want to defend Meyer is “He’s not the police. It’s not his job to investigate these things.”
    That’s true but that’s not the issue.
    Urban hired Zach Smith. Zach Smith has had issues with drinking, issues with other substance abuse. He’s misused university funds. He’s had affairs. He has skipped out on recruiting visits and instead gone to strip clubs. And Urban kept him around. Urban hired him, when he shouldn’t have in the first place. Smith was hired because of who his grandfather is. And Smith ran wild.
    Zach Smith was never charged with domestic violence (how he wasn’t, I still don’t understand).
    But even without that, he was engaging in many, many, many behaviors that should have resulted in him losing his job and Urban kept him around.

    (more…)

  • What Jim Thome can teach us about strengths and weaknesses

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    Jim Thome. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia commons @Erik Drost

    Like any Cleveland Indians fan growing up in the 90s, Jim Thome is one of my all time favorite baseball players.

    Always had a good reputation as being friendly, a slugger, wore high socks like he was playing in the 30s. What wasn’t there to love?

    This past weekend, Thome was enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. It’s well deserved. Thome’s 612 career home runs ranks him eighth all time.

    Baseball fans talk about guys who are five tool players, which refers to someone who can hit for power, hit for average, run well, throw well, and who has a good glove.

    Obviously Thome excelled at hitting for power. And while his career batting average was a respectable (though not exactly phenomenal .276), he actually is 51st all time in on base percentage because Thome also walked a lot.

    But he wasn’t known for being a great fielder or runner (19 career stolen bases, compared to being caught stealing 20 times).

    Simply put, Jim Thome was not a five tool player. And yet he’s in the Hall of Fame, because parts of his game were great.

    We all have room to grow, areas where we can improve. And we should always strive to get better in those areas. But there are also some skills where we’ll probably never excel, and that’s ok, because we can still do a lot with the talent and ability we have.

    Sometimes we can get bogged down for modest improvements in areas that aren’t our strengths when we could be working to cultivate our strengths to become even better. Let us never be so good at something that we think we can’t still do it better.

    What’s something you’re good at where you could get even better?

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • Life lessons from baseball

     

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    Tomorrow is opening day of the 2018 Major League Baseball season. Between opening day and the end of the season in early November, more than 2,430 games will be played.

    Baseball’s regular season is the longest in American professional sports, nearly doubling the 82 games NBA and NHL seasons.

    I think about the baseball games that are blowouts. The 10, 12, 14 run wins. When a team gets behind by a huge margin in baseball, it’s very rare for them to comeback and win. And the later in the game a team is down by a big run-differential, the less likely they are to comeback. If you get to the bottom of the 9th down by double-digit runs, the incidence of a comeback is virtually unheard of.

    In a baseball game, you can go out on Thursday, and your team can get crushed. Starting pitcher might not have good stuff bats aren’t connecting, errors. It can be a horrible day, a 12 run loss.

    But the beauty of baseball is that, no matter what happened on Thursday, Friday is a new opportunity to go out and to succeed. No matter how badly you lost yesterday, it doesn’t matter with how you can do today.

    Life is the same way. We can have a really bad day. We can feel totally defeated. But tomorrow is always a new day.

    That metaphor works both ways. If you were the team who dominated on Thursday, you still have to go out and play well on Friday.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Speed skater who lost out on carrying American flag sits out opening ceremony

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    Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons @Mingo Hagen

    Busch league.

    Shani Davis was passed over for carrying the U.S. Olympic flag. The speed skater had been tied with luge star Erin Hamlin.

    The method of breaking the tie, as was already established, was to do a coin toss, which was the tie breaking procedure that had been established prior by the U.S. Olympic Committee. (more…)

  • Super Bowl: A+ Super Bowl Commercials: F

    I don’t know if I can call Super Bowl 52 the greatest Super Bowl I’ve ever seen when there was very little defense played. But that was definitely the most entertaining Super Bowl I’ve ever seen. Great game, a joy to watch. (more…)